Mustamäe, Tallinn, Estonia

Yesterday 19.30 arrived in Tallinn on a 2h ferry from Helsinki (42 EUR per person, incl. free wireless). The trip is now officially over in the sense that we have arrived in one of our homelands.

Today has been relatively uneventful: woke up at 5 o'clock being still in the Beijing timezone, went grocery shopping at 9 (they open the Konsum across the street that late), wanted to buy tatar to prepare tatrapudru, a local porridge, but turned out that Estonia is out of tatar. The weather is cold, strong wind is blowing autumn colors off the trees. So been indoors working on our travel website. Will try to upload more photos and videos and complete some of the notes over the next few weeks.

Rautatieasema, Helsinki, Finland

Flight went well. Nice views to Mongolian deserts. Vegi food sucked. Now bus to Länsiterminaali.

E12, T3, Beijing airport

Boarding our flight. Security took our lighter. Spent our last 300 yuan on tea. In 8h in Europe, after 10.5 months.

Flowering House Hostel, Beijing (leaving tomorrow morning)

Yesterday morning got back from Xi'an. This time had a bed in the 13h overnight train. Slept for almost the whole duration of the trip.

Today scored our 40th UNESCO World Heritage site on this trip: the Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing. (The full list of visited UNESCO sites is included in the trip statistics file.) The Summer Palace (entrance fee 60 CNY) is a pleasant set of parks, hills, bridges and temples by a surprisingly large Kunming lake 14km from the center of Beijing but easily reached by metro. (Both the metro and the Summer Palace were very crowded which seems to be usual for the Chinese mid-autumn holiday time.) Several halls in the palace complex contain museums showing Chinese bronze, glass, porcelain, jade etc. crafts, but most are simply shops.

Tomorrow morning will fly to Helsinki and take a ferry from there to Tallinn. This will mark the end of our trip.

Ludao Hotel, Xi'an (last night here)

Our today's project was to walk the full rectangle on the ancient but very well preserved/restored Xi'an city wall (the largest city wall in the world according to some sources). We started at the railway station (North-eastern section of the wall) and walked 16.7km for 5h10min (moving time 4h09min) to complete the task a little before sunset.

The walk takes place on the 15m-wide top of the wall, passing watch towers and going over city gates, and offers views to the moat and parks by the wall, and the city inside and outside the wall. Outside there are many skyscrapers and inside some older buildings. But nothing too spectacular.

Only a few entry points onto the wall are open to the public and one has to pay 40 CNY (= 6 USD) to enter. This might explain why there were relatively few people on the wall, especially in the Northern sections where the views are not so good. I wonder what the locals think about the situation that a relatively large area in the middle of the city is accessible only if you pay a considerable amount of money.

No food (beyond ice-cream) is sold on the wall so if you decide to go on this hike be sure to pack a sandwich. Also consider that your entry gate might have closed for the night when you arrive back to your starting point and that you have to break the law a bit and climb over some fences before you can sit down to your evening's dumplings and beer.

Tomorrow will do more sightseeing in Xi'an and in the evening will travel back to Beijing.

Lu Dao Hotel, Xi'an

We have now spent 2 days in and around Xi'an. Visited the downtown area that is quite modern and has no feel of an ancient city in spite of the 3000 years of history. Mostly there are modern buildings everywhere,  some have a local touch though with their pagoda shaped roofs. There is also a Muslim quarter that had a few interesting older houses and a few scripts in Arabic on the houses. Unfortunately this area does not convey much of a feel of the way of life a couple of centuries ago, as it is now full of tourist shops and restaurants. Many shops sell sweets and dried fruits, maybe that is supposed to give the area the Near East touch? At the end of this shopping street is a remnant of the old city: the Drum Tower. Its counterpart, the Bell Tower is only a few hundred meters away. Both date back to the 14th century and were used to mark dawn and night with the tolling of the bell and beating of the drum, respectively. The downtown is surrounded by the similarly old city wall that is really huge with its 12m height and 18m thickness. It is possible to walk around town on the top of the wall: it is our plan for today.

Yesterday we visited the famous Terracotta Warriors, who guard the tomb of the first Qin emperor. Although more than 2000 years old, it has only been discovered in 1976 when a bunch of locals were digging a well in this area and found some pieces of the warriors. The founder is now a famous person in China and works for the Museum on site. He also gives autographs to the visitors.
The site is located about 1h bus-ride away from Xi'an. There are 3 major pits open to public and 2 more will be opened in a week. The biggest is pit 1 that contains supposedly about 6000 soldiers, all lined up facing east, except on the flanks, where one row of soldiers faces outwards. The warriors are standing in long corridors, separated by walls. They had to put them into this formation, because they were covered with a roof  (and also by soil, as it all was meant to be underground) and the logs used were only that long. Only about 2000 terracotta soldiers have been excavated and reconstructed here. The rest lay underground or lay in small pieces scattered on the ground. According to the historians, after the death of the emperor, there was an uprising and his tomb was looted and the terracotta soldiers were destroyed and burned. This makes the excavation and reconstruction very difficult as it is more like a puzzle game. Allegedly it requires half a year to put one single warrior together. So far they found only one archer in an almost complete shape. One problem is that the soldiers are painted in 13 different colors, but a few days after they are excavated they lose this color. Now the scientists try to work out a method to preserve the color and will go on with the further excavation when they have found a solution. In pit 1 there are also a few chariots, pulled by 4 horses each, but as the chariots were made of wood, they have disintegrated.
The only pit that has been fully excavated is pit 3 with only 68 figures. It is supposed to be the headquarters of the army, containing many high ranking officers, a few guards and a wooden chariot.
Pit 2 again contains many warriors, but from different divisions. Unlike in pit 1, there are also archers (both kneeling and standing) and cavaliers and not only infantry members. Interestingly, the cavaliers are not riding their horses, but only standing next to them. In the pits one can only view the soldiers from a viewing platform, meaning the closest figure is still about 10-15 meters away and below the surface. Coming close up to a few soldiers is only possible in pit 3, where there are a few glass cabinets. Here one realizes the most impressive thing about the site: the details of the figures. Their clothing, their hairstyle, their facial expressions including their wrinkles are all remarkably elaborately sculpted, even the pattern on the sole of their shoes... furthermore, all 6000-8000 soldiers look different... quite impressive.. and all that hassle for a dead emperor...
An other surprising thing we learned was that already 2000 years ago they put a thin chromium cover on their bronze swords to protect them and keep them sharp. In the modern world this technology that we now commonly use on our knives was only reinvented in the 20th century.
I also have to comment on the technology used to make the 2m tall figures. The legs, that are solid, the body, that is hollow and the head that is also solid were made separately and the heads can still be separated. The horses are also hollow and have holes on the sides, probably to enhance the drying procedure. The tails can also be removed.

An other remarkable thing that has to be mentioned here: after a few weeks in Chinese territory Kaarel knows already 45 Chinese characters. He mainly translates the city names and metro station names with the help of Google translator. So his knowledge covers mostly geographic names. He also bought an  interesting book that tracks back the history of a few hundred characters and shows how they originated and changed over time.

Lu Dao Youth Hostel, Xi'an

After an 11h long overnight train-ride we have arrived to Xi'an, one of the oldest cities in China with over 3000 years. At this point it seems that it will be our only site to visit outside of Beijing on this trip. It is famous for the Army of Terracotta Warriors, consisting of over 6000 larger than life size soldiers, that were buried with emperor Qin Shi Huang 2000 years ago, for a reason currently not well understood. There are also other sights in the city, including the city wall, a bell tower and a Muslim quarter with good food. These are on our current to see list.

Yesterday we visited the zoo in Beijing and saw the first giant pandas in their homeland. There were two buildings each with 4-5 pandas. As expected, they were not really active, most of them sleeping and the rest of them munching on bamboo or watermelon. It is quite funny to watch them eating like a king, laying on their backs, with their hind legs comfortably stretched out and slowly chewing their food that they hold on their fat belly. In the panda houses there were quite informative posters about the pandas and their conservation and their relation with the Olympic Games in 2008. But it was almost the only place in the whole zoo, where some more detailed information was available. In the rest of the zoo, only the names of the animals were written in English, everything else was in Chinese. The housing conditions of the larger animals was not that outrageous. As probably any zoo that is confined to the middle of a large city, this zoo must also be struggling with space problems. For example, they have only a few outdoor enclosures for the large cats, so half of them had to stay indoors in cages which are definitely way too small for them. They have the well known and sad heritage of other zoos as well: the menagerie kind of housing. So I guess it will take quite some time and money to get rid of it and convert the zoo into a nice spacious habitat for the animals. What I missed though in many places were the environmental enrichment practices, including toys to prevent boredom of the animals. A very annoying thing was the behaviour of the local visitors. They were knocking loudly on every window or shouting, to wake up the sleeping animals or to make them look into their cameras. Feeding of the animals is also a common practise, in spite of the large forbidding sings. An interesting feature of the Beijing zoo is the arbitrary mixing of different species in the same enclosure, e.g. chicken or squirrel monkey from South America with the ring-tailed lemur from Madagascar. Chicken we also saw in the cages of other animals and it made us think where the fried chicken in the food stalls next to these cages might originate from...

The day before yesterday we spent in the southern part of downtown Beijing. Our original goal was to visit the Underground City that is a long tunnel system, dug out in the 70s in the fear of a nuclear attack surprise, surprise from the Soviets! It was dug out by hand by over 300'000 citizens. In the case of an attack it could have housed 40% of the city's population and had room for hospitals, schools, mushroom cultivation facilities (that can grow without sunlight), bathrooms, cinemas etc. However, it seems to be impossible to visit these tunnels as a tourist. On different websites 3 different addresses are listed as potential entrances, but they are either closed permanently (永久, as we found out at 62 Xidamo Changjie, Qianmen) or have a different function now (theatre, camera shop). So instead of the underground tunnels, we visited the close-by Temple of Heaven. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Why exactly is not really clear to me, as we did not find it all that interesting. It is located in the middle of a well-kept large park (it actually does not have much useful space for locals to do activities as there are only few benches and open spaces). The temple itself is a round wooden building with similar decoration as the palaces in the Forbidden City. It is connected with an elevated walkway to another temple and to the Round Altar. The latter one is a 3 level marble construction that symbolises heaven. The purpose of these buildings was for the emperor to pray for good harvest and offer animal sacrifices in an elaborately composed ritual. The most interesting thing here was perhaps to watch the locals picking walnuts from the trees in the park.

Flowering House Hostel (last night here, maybe)

The temperature dropped by about 10 degrees last night and it has been raining all day the kind of light misty rain. It is quite cold, at some point had to wear my jacket and fleece, something that I haven't done since Papua New Guinea Highlands (in May).

Today visited the Great Wall of China. Lonely Planet lists 7 places around Beijing where one can see the wall. Our hostel's receptionist recommended Juyongguan as it is less touristy and closest to the city. Bus number 919 from the Deshengmen station takes you there but locating this bus turned out to be too complex for us: the station seemed to have no central information/ticket office, and is more like set of bus stops scattered over a larger area. Most of the buses are called 919, I guess their subtypes can be distinguished by a few Chinese characters next to the number. Nobody speaks English. Gave up and took a bus to Badaling (70km NW from the city), the most popular site to view the Wall, also serviced by bus 919.

As expected, Badaling was very touristy, with a very well restored segment of the wall, surrounded by restaurants, amusement parks, souvenir vendors, and a cable car line. Even a bunch of sad looking Asian bears are kept in a pit for entertainment. Locals feed them carrots. The Wall is very steep in some parts and was very slippery due to the rain. Good that they have installed hand rails. Walked a couple of kilometers along two stretches of the wall, some more remote parts were almost empty so one could take pictures with no people on them, although visibility to the wall snaking away over the hills was quite bad. The more touristy parts were crowded with Chinese tourist groups who were all interested in taking photos with us. So some time was spent on that but we are used to this by now.

The bus back to Beijing got stuck in a rush hour traffic jam and took about 2h longer than the trip out of town in the morning.

Yesterday visited the Forbidden City, another must-see Beijing sight. It's a large territory covered with orderly laid out Chinese houses and crowded with tourist groups. The most interesting thing for me was the location-aware audio guide that one can rent and the fact that they offer these guides in 40 different languages.

Tomorrow will try to buy the train ticket for an overnight journey to Xi'an to see the Terracotta Army there. But it seems that these tickets sell out quickly, so might have to postpone the trip by a day.

(It's been now more than 400 days on the road for us. Thinking of going home soon.)