Up on the roof

[First published July 15, 2015]  When this old world starts to getting me down..... 

For me, the highlight of the visit to the ancient city of Xi'an was our time spent up on the city walls. The Bell Tower and Drum Tower are beautiful and worth a visit, but riding a biycle around the city walls was a real pinch-me moment. Here we are, riding around the top of the city walls on a bicycle in the middle of China! How 'bout that!  We were proud too, of completing the 14 kilometer ride especially on such a hot day while many others were opting for a chauffered ride in the electric carts. Some of the Chinese tourists were cheering the old foreigners on, giving us the "thumbs up." 

First of course, there's stairs..... there are always stairs....

Which this bride used to great effect for her wedding portrait. She is wearing red, the color for celebrations in China.

 As you can see, it was a hazy day, unfortunately, but that's par for the course in China's cities. But if "bike riding on top of a wall" sounded like an unwise proposition, you can see for yourself how broad and level the top of the wall is...

There are a lot of buildings up here as well, and extended parapets at the four corners. Hey, I'm just going to throw around words like "battlements" and "parapets."  It was all very medieval.

In fact the defensive arrangements at the gate (or barbican) seemed very similar to what I've read about in historical fiction or seen in the movies. People do not bust their asses hauling huge stones into position on mounds of beaten earthworks just to make a decoration or to project an impressive statement of strength. These walls are primarily defensive and people built them because they needed them. 

Which must give us pause to consider what life was like in the middle ages. It's not just that the dangers we face today cannot all be kept out by a wall. Archeologists are turning up more and more evidence that the violent death rate was much higher in the past, even taking into account the horrific World Wars of the last century. 

But, I digress. Here are some more views of and from things. We trudged up the stairs to see them, so, here are some pictures of the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. These buildings have existed for nigh on 700 years but I don't think the original structures survive. Still. The continuity is still impressive for someone like me who comes from a city where the oldest building is a little log cabin about 160 years old. These buildings have seen a lot of humanity come and go. The Bell Tower was the city's morning alarm clock and no doubt also served as a warning system, and the drums in the Drum Tower were sounded in the evening, probably before the city gates were closed for the night. I'm just guessing there.

Shaanxi Province is also home to Yan'an, a remote city folded into low mountains north of Xi'an. The exhausted remnants of the Long March soldiers staggered into Yan'an in 1935. From Yan'an, Mao consolidated his hold on the Chinese Communist Party and plotted the eventual conquest of China. Yan'an is a place of pilgrimage for many Chinese people and I also wanted to see the simple cave dug-out dwellings where Mao and his comrades lived and where he met and married his fourth wife, the infamous Jiang Qing. But the idea of taking a lengthy bus ride there and back was not very appealing. Then.....

This is actually a nightclub!

Wisteria arch in Xi'an

Free musical performances are also given in the Bell Tower and Drum Tower every day. Here is a snippet of the drummers in the Drum Tower.  


















The travel agent in our hotel showed us an affordable two day package tour that would take in the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, and the Wouku Falls on the Yellow River, neither of which we knew anything about, as well as some revolutionary sites in Yan'an. We'd have a guided bus tour, hit the spots, and all meals and hotel included. However, it was a Chinese tour in Chinese for Chinese people. No problem! We decided to really go native, and signed up for the tour which left from our hotel in Xi'an the next morning. (To be continued.)

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