China 2017: Muslim Quarter

When last we left our very unheroic hero, he had arrived in Xi'an a full day late, without sleeping, appallingly jetlagged, and in the early stages of adjusting to powerful mind-affecting medication, to find his hotel politely reporting they had never heard of him.

Well, you may say. Well. Well, well. Um. I mean, I had definitely made a booking, and had money taken for the booking, and I have a fair amount of confidence that STA Travel weren't scamming me.* On the other hand, these nice people couldn't find a record of my booking or payment. What a conundrum, you might say; rather a pickle, isn't it?

*they had of course used an intermediary, and in theory they could have been scamming me; but I was far too tired, nauseous and language-shocked to think of that.

Obviously I'm not about to do anything outrageous, like throw a tantrum, or burst into floods of tears, or demand to speak to the manager, or proclaim that I was being treated appallingly, or threaten to write to the Telegraph, or insist that they give me a room, or suggest that they might be wrong, or imply in any way that they might personally be at fault, or look cross, or sigh heavily. I must confess I do at one stage raise one eyebrow and show them my booking printout, but in my defence, I am very tired and assume this was all some simple misunderstanding, and no actual injury was intended; though I do of course later send an anonymous basket of flowers.

Anyway, I look sheepish and tug my right earlobe a couple of times, and apologise several times for troubling them, and murmur in an embarrassed way that there seems to have been some kind of mistake. These moments are when you realise you're abroad, because this does not send the entire staff into a frenzy of anxious activity; nor does a grizzled veteran named Pam or Tom emerge from a secret abode, plonk a brick-red cuppa down on the desk and stare thoughtfully at my passport for a minute, before rummaging in a hitherto-unnoticed drawer and producing a document that explains and resolves the whole affair. In Japan, too, this behaviour would probably have caused the silent flaring of emergency lights in a back room, from whence a crack team of customer service marines would have sallied forth to deal with the seething client before any kind of rampage could ensue. In China, for some incomprehensible reason, they appear to take my mild demeanour and friendly tone as an indication that I'm not stressed or irate about the latest in a string of exhausting failures, and we can discuss the whole situation at length.

My Chinese is definitely not up to this. I have probably never been happier to have a native speaker on hand to help. Between us we relay information back and forth for a good fifteen minutes, comparing different screens and sets of paperwork - I dig out my laptop and fire that up in case it helped (it didn't). Eventually they offer to give me the room, since I do seem to have all the right information, for which I assume HT's silver tongue and obvious trustworthiness is responsible. Personally I tend to have more of a "police are anxious to speak to this Caucasian male seen in the area" vibe. I agree to email my travel agent and ask them to provide more information so we can resolve this in the morning; one of those occasions where the 8-hour time difference causes problems!

After my very late arrival, HT suggests we go for a walk. We head to the nearby city centre; it has a concentration of interesting historical areas that I remember well from my previous trip. The sun is slipping lower in the sky, casting soft yellow light.

Here's my route: you can sort of follow along, although China and Google maps don't play well, so I suggest you use Baidu maps instead for street view exploring.

The underpass that encircles the heart of the Old City

^_^

Left: The central square by the Xi'an Bell Tower. Right: Archival footage! I took this back in 2008, at the same Starbucks. The lady is Joanne, who was on another volunteer programme. One day I'll get around to blogging about that trip...

Looking up towards the Bell Tower.

I believe this is a hotel and/or restaurant in the Bell Tower Square. Left: 2017. Right: A view from the bridge in 2008.

This man is creating elaborate pictures inside a bottle by very careful application of sand.

How many different kinds of shop is this? And more importantly, why? I count: shoes, bubble tea, whole coconuts, and dried fish products. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just... not a combination I would have predicted, you know?

Muslim Quarter

This district has a high concentration of Muslim residents; I assume this partly relates to Xi'an's historical role in the Silk Road, bringing traders from across Eurasia. It has all kinds of stalls and shops, and is a hotspot in the evenings. I've heard it's also a hotspot for pickpockets, so as an exhausted tourist I try to take good care.

It's also busy most of the time, day and night. There are plenty of souvenir shops here was well, and an excitingly windy covered market; but this time we don't go in there.

This is not particularly busy by the standards of the street.

Quite a lot of the stalls are dedicated to food. Below is an artisan making traditional sweets, kneading and stretching and twisting dough hung on a hook. It will be cut up and rolled in various combinations of nuts, spices, sugar and other flavourings. On the left you can see deep-fried squid and crustaceans, which are eaten like a lollipop.

These ladies run a sweet stall - quite a popular one as you can tell by the number of staff.

After a wander round, HT takes me for a meal. She recommends a regional delicacy called Majiang Liangpi (麻酱凉皮, Májiàng liángpí). These are cold noodles, served with a sauce based around black sesame. I try some, because it's not like I get the opportunity often. Unfortunately, between exhaustion and the unfamiliar taste, I find I'm not able to eat very much. I know sesame paste is one of the more acquired tastes in Chinese cooking, so I'd like to try and get used to it.

I think the green place in the centre is the entrance to the restaurant, but it's hard to be sure.

This is the upper part of just one of the buildings that line the Muslim Quarter. There are lots of these striking buildings near the city centre. I love the architecture.

As the evening sets in, it starts to get busy - people are finishing work, or deciding to head out with the children, and congregating here to take advantage of all the food stalls.

We decide to call it an evening, and HT kindly escorts me back to the hotel. On the way I take this photo, to help show off the sheer sense of vastness that I always get in China - the cities are so big, so tall, and although Japan was similar in some ways, Xi'an also has (unusually?) some big wide open spaces that highlight it even more. I suppose the areas of clustered tall buildings have a claustrophobic feel, whereas when there's a break in them, it gives you the space to more fully grasp the size of what you're dealing with?

I got way too attached to this function.

Basel: Last Day and Departure

By the morning of my third day in Basel, I am rather fed up. I'm still tired and ill from whatever blight has afflicated me. I've spent a good part of two days wandering aimlessly round the city, seeing the main streets and landmarks. I'm sincerely wondering what I can do with the rest of the day.

I take the bus into town, where I find a backery and pick up a couple of things to eat: Grättimaa Schoggi (chocolate chip pastry man) and a Schoggiweggli (some kind of chocolate chip pastry).

It all looks so delicious, and there's only one of me to eat it.

Today, I decided to head up through the Old City, which I'd only checked in passing previously. I avoided bringing a laptop so as to keep my bag light and allow for plenty of walking. I decide to turn off after the bridge and take a fairly circuitous route through various back streets. They're mildly interesting, but not in a photogenic way for the most part.

This mural is on a random wall. I have no idea what it represents, but it's both cool and trippy - could easily be early roleplaying game illustrations.

There's a large building ahead which attracts my attention. This proves to be the Congress Centre, which I can't actually get inside. There's some kind of events going on, but there are security - presumably you either need a pass or to buy a ticket. On the plus side, there's some restaurants around too, and one of them is a relatively affordable Japanese restaurant! Hooray. I leap at the chance.

Weird hole in the middle of the roof; it lets in a reasonable amount of light and presumably lightens the roof as well. Kind of cool.

Not pictured here: very numbers of people breathing smoke all over me from all directions.

This was perfectly pleasant. It came with lamb, which I've only seen at a Mongolian restaurant in Japan, but was quite nice.

Refreshed, I head back towards Barfuesserplatz and the Historical Museum, which was closed yesterday.

I wander inside and find a handy locker to store my stuff. Some confusion ensues, because I'm under the impression that the museum is free, but as I try to wander down a set of stairs to check out the basement gallery, a staff member pounces on me. I apologise and go to buy a ticket I don't especially want. I think the setup may be that the basement part is ticketed but the upstairs is free? I'm confused. Maybe none of it is. Anyway, I pay and get on with it.

A town model

There was an exhibition of chemistry, innovation and its social relevance.

I believe this is a coal-bearing rock, or some such.

Looks pretty groovy to me.

The museum is inside a church, and most of the fittings are still here. There are also some displays of historical church silverware.

The basement contains a more general set of historical goods. Most of them are the usual generic artefacts - bowls, coins, bits of bone and so on. All fine, but I've seen plenty before.

These are incredibly thin stackable bowls.

I think this is a coconut turned into a dispenser of some sort.

Animal samples in a cabinet of curiosities.

There were also plenty of tapestries, bits of mediaeval artwork (including rescued fragments of a huge Dance of Death mural) and samples from various local crafts.

This room is preserved as it belonged to a famous theologian, but embarrassingly I can't remember which and it's not on the website.

Museumed out, I stride off into the steep streets to the south-west, randomly doing a circuit and just scoping the place out. There's not a huge amount of great interest to see here - various shops, lots of houses, but it's fairly ordinary stuff and the lighting isn't very good.

To be fair, most places are not fundamentally particularly interesting. I've learned this more and more as I travel more. Many places are interesting to visit with other people. Some places are very scenic, although that often fades after a while. Most places have a few specific points of interest, which you may or may not be able to appreciate. I suspect it's a little easier if you're very much into restaurants or bars or something, because you can find that sort of thing more or less everywhere.

There is a large barometer in this street. I don't know why. At least, I think it was a barometer.

Roothuus

There's a big, distinctive red building in the town centre. This is the town hall; "Roothuus" is the local dialect term for Council Hall (elsewhere "Rathaus"), and a handy homophonic pun on "Red House". It's not particularly striking in the low light conditions that prevail, but when the sun strikes it's very pleasing.

With the night creeping in, I find a My Thai restaurant in a nearby shopping centre. I was actually planning to buy some bits from a supermarket, but it didn't have a suitable set of things (shopping for one meal for one person in a generic supermarket is suboptimal). So instead, I go for further noodles and nice green tea.

Once I get back, I write for a while and decide on a walk. I'm getting bored and want to get out. I deliberately head away from town, and meander nowhere in particular. It's not hugely interesting, being just a generic residential district, but my podcast is good so it's fine.

The following day, my flight is in the afternoon. For breakfast, I eat my cakes.

I lock up, hand over the keys, and head off into town. Here I find a luggage locker to tuck my case away, and have another wander around. There's not a lot of excitement; I take further photos of the red building, and have my lunch back at My Thai to save the effort of hunting around too much. At that point I see no particular advantage in hanging around and decide to just head to the airport. There's a few intriguing-looking books, but given the extortionate prices here I see no reason to buy them; I can always pick them up from German sources. And I really, really don't need any more books right now.

I sit around bored for a while, having several hours to kill before the flight. I sensibly brought some basic food, because the airport is sparse and extremely boring, though it does have a cafe. And now for the tedious journey back to Manchester.

Several hours later, I get into Manchester. The flight has not provided any form of liquid, and I've had no opportunity to collect any. My luggage takes so long to arrive that I have to sprint through the airport and down the stairs to the station, in the hopes of getting the 9.45pm train home. My hopes are dashed when, although I arrive a couple of minutes early, the train's arrival time slowly ticks back minute by minute. Before long, it's evident that there's no point getting it as I'll miss my connection and be stranded in the middle of nowhere overnight.

Thank heavens, the shop which earlier seemed to be closed has reopened. It's an all-night concern, apparently, and they were just restocking! I manage to buy a tea and muffin (eventually ferreting out my British money) and collapse at a table to wait two hours. As I do so, I realise that the foil-wrapped chocolate I was kindly given by my host at Aaron's Sleepwell, and hastily tucked into a pocket, has melted in my coat and seeped into the fabric, bestowing a large oily patch and a strong scent of chocolate which (SPOILERS) remains months later after several bouts of scrubbing and treatment.

I hate Basel.

I eventually get back well after midnight, pay for a taxi (almost unprecedented) and stumble into my flat around 1am. I'm so glad I took today off work.