Given the Bell Tower's beauty, I figured I would move a little further and check out the Drum Tower. Really it is difficult for me to tell the difference, but it is also lit up spectactularly. Who needs Christmas when you have Xi'an's Bell and Drum towers?
The Drum Tower led me into the Muslim Quarter, and it proved the most memorable part of the night!
There was so much bustle, it felt like a carnival. Countless fascinating food options, and all sorts of other things for sale, as well. I limited myself to a fresh pomegranate juice, but only by promising myself that I would come back today.
Which, I did.
I began my enjoyment of all the Muslim quarter had to offer with a bbq squid on a stick.
Next, I tried some jackfuit, and then took a break from eating to tour the Great Mosque.
In some ways the Great Mosque is a bit boring, except that it is a mosque that could fool you for Buddhist temple!
Seriously, do these turtles strike you as Muslim?
This is the minaret!
In some places you can identify some Arabic, and in one spot is a chalk board with prayer times listed, so if you look for the clues you can figure out that it is Muslim; but really I am sure if I had just wandered in I would have assumed it was Buddhist. This is the prayer hall (which non-Muslims cannot enter):
After the mosque I went back to eating. This was a dish of the Xi'an famous cold noodles with sesame sauce. Yum!
And then it was back to the street for some dumplings.
I was stuffed now, so had to quit eating sadly.
Something that almost all Xi'an cuisine seems to have is chili peppers, and look at this!
From the Muslim quarter, I went to the closest metro station. By the way, here is what the Bell Tower looks like in the day time.
I rode the metro for the first time (state-of-the-art, not surprisingly) to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda.
This pagoda dates to 652, although then it was only five stories and now it is seven.
The pagoda is in the middle of a large temple complex, which has many beautiful buildings and gardens and water features and so on. I walked through some of it, but mainly I was interested in climbing the pagoda. Here were the views from the four windows at the top:
After the pagoda, I rode the metro back to my hostel. I noticed this presumably Communist Party propaganda in the metro station and realized how rare it has been to see propaganda in China, especially in comparison to North Korea, where it was ubiquitous; even this rather subtle flag stood out to me.
I ate dinner from a place where the food was already prepared and behind glass and I simply pointed at what I wanted and the lady scooped it onto a plate for me. Then she took a big bowl of rice and dumped it on top. The food was delicious, and the lady was so happy to be serving me that it made it taste even better. By pointing I asked for a beer, and she gave me a bottle along with a plastic bowl to drink from. Not exactly what I would consider a prime way to enjoy a beer, but it was a fun experience anyway. The whole meal (plate of food + rice + beer) cost me 15 yuan, or about $3 CAD!
After dinner, I headed back again to the Muslim quarter to try something I had not had any room left in my stomach to try earlier: what is basically a fresh fruit buffet. They give you a disposable bowl and reusable tongs and you go down the row picking out fruit you want. Other than mango, grapefruit, and kiwi, I do not know the names of the fruits I chose!
Once you have your bowl full of whatever you want, they chop it up for you, and then charge by weight.
My bowl came to 33 yuan, or close to $7 CAD, so not cheap, especially by Xi'an standards, but what a delicious bowl of exotic fresh fruit, and the novelty for me was so worth it!
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