We started the day touring Xi'an's city walls, which are in the process of being fully restored. These walls are about 600 years old. They have small square holes for firing down on intruders, as well a moat surrounding them. From the top, you have a view both into the old city of Xi'an, which seems to be not-so-old, and the modern city on the other side. Again, we watched with amazement as street cleaners mopped the pathways and plaza in front of the gate.

Our next step was a jade "factory", which actually was a jade carving demonstration along with a huge jade store. As always, we enjoyed watching the demonstration as well as learning how to distinguish hard jade from soft jade from glass fake jade. And we actually didn't buy anything (much to the dismay of the dozens of shop attendants who following us around, commenting on every piece if we stopped for more than two seconds). We were there at the same time as a busload of Israelis, which prompted one shop lady to apologize, since the "Israelis are always the noisiest".

Our last stop in Xi'an was at the brand new Han Yangling Museum, a museum of a tomb of a Han emporer. This museum was amazing, both for its content as well as for its display technique. This tomb dates from about 200 years after the ones we saw earlier, and by then the emporer had decided that the large terracotta warriors were a bit extreme. So his solution was to do as many, but in a small, toy-like size. I'd say they were about a foot tall each. There were thousands and thousands lined up in pits, again only partially unearthed. There also were hundreds of miniature animals, vessels, etc. The interesting display technique was that again they built the museum over the archeological pits, but this time with see-through floors, and you actually walked over the site, seeing the artifacts, as they were found, below. It was a bit dizzying, but very impressive.

Our flight to Beijing was uneventful, and Len already wrote about our evening. I will second his comment that the "egg" is the most incredible building I have ever seen.

-- Donna