Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Breakfast at Grand Mercure Hotel
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| My breakfast: egg corn soup (labeled as "local cuisine"), lychee, a tofu
something, a watercress dumpling, and a chocolate croissant (not
pictured) (which tasted less wrong than I expected for China).
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| Shaanxi History Museum
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| In the Shaanxi History Museum, I liked how some of the ceramics were
colored.
| A neat design for a vase.
| The vase's label.
| A party on camel!
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| The label for the camel sculpture.
| Though this pot looks normal, it actually gets filled upside-down. The
next few pictures explain what I mean.
| The label for the bottom-filled-kettle.
| A cut-away view of the kettle, as shown in a video describing how the
kettle works.
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| Another cut-away view of the kettle in the process of being filled.
| A cut-away view showing how the kettle appears when filled and righted.
| Many small statues buried with a Ming dynasty emperor. Though much
smaller than the Qin's emperor's terracotta warriors, these are
appealing in that they still retained their color.
| The description of the previous photo's mortuary statues.
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| A magic square. The Chinese says that's it's evidence of 13th century
east-west trade.
| Zoom in. I think this is a cool-looking piece of armor. And it's made
of stone! It must be heavy.
| The label for the stone armor.
| A wall of close-up photographs of the faces of terracotta warriors (that
I saw yesterday). Such detail, so unique!
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| Elsewhere in Xi'an
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| Big Wild Goose Pagoda.
| Our tour group, looking surprisingly good in spite of toasting in the
sun.
| Ditto.
| A movie (with music!) of a fun water show. Watch it!
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| I also took a higher resolution image of the water show. Notice the
kids playing and the various people with umbrellas. It was a hot day,
so the mist that blew to the nearby audience was appreciated.
| Another movie of the water show. The water shoots pretty darn high!
Starting halfway through, the movie focuses (on and off) on a little kid
playing in the fountain.
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| Lunch at a Dumpling Restaurant
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| The display table of dumplings at the entrance to the restaurant.
| Close-up of the left side of the table. Notice the frogs, chickens, and
smiley-faces.
| The middle. I think the bottom-center dumplings look kind of like
ducks.
| The right side of the table.
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Our array of cold appetizers. Clockwise from twelve-o'clock:
- cabbage and jellied noodles - ick
- slightly pickled cucumbers - good
- what I thought was chewy intestine was actually pig lip
- musty bean thread noodles
- fresh pea sprouts
- boiled peanuts
- walnuts, broccoli stalks, mushrooms
- vermicelli and greens
- dense, dry red bean?
- weird, slimy brown noodles
| Thus begins the wave of dumplings.
Top: pumpkin. People loved this.
Bottom-left: pork? Standard, good
Bottom-right: black mushroom and pork?
| Top: fried rice dumpling bag. Really good, though didn't taste much
like fried rice.
Left: spicy chicken?
Right: pork and mushroom?
Bottom: tomato dumpling. Taste like it's filled with stewed, canned
tomatoes, slightly sweet.
| Top (green): vegetable. Fine, dry.
Left: shrimp.
Bottom (brown): walnut. This tasted like charoset except it needed more
apple.
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Top-left (orange): beef with pepper and vinegar.
Top-right (green): chicken. Straight-up like U.S. dim sum.
Bottom-left: ham and corn.
| Spicy pork dumpling, Sichuan flavored.
| A pot of mini dumplings containing chicken. When boiling, it looks as
if the dumplings are swimming. Because they're small, it's hard to tell
how many dumplings you get when you ladle yourself some soup. The
number you get is supposed to tell your fortune. I got two, which means
"double happy."
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We also had sweet, lukewarm, cloudy rice wine with lunch.
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