Our first weekend in Xi’an was great fun. On Saturday, we (Meilina, Nurse Gill and I) rode the bus into Xianyang, and then took the metro into downtown Xi’an. It was nice to get away for a while. The orphanage is a great place, but it’s pretty isolated (aka in the middle of nowhere). Plus, there’s not much conversation here since most of the kids don’t talk yet and the nannies speak in a local dialect that I have SUCH a hard time understanding. Still, I think it’s pretty awesome to be staying in an authentic Chinese village, complete with an extremely unreliable bus system and rows upon rows of small family businesses.
So the point is, it’s great out here in Weiyang District, but I loved being in the heart of the city this weekend. Everyone was busy and loud: buying, selling, travelling, and consuming. There really are A LOT of people in China. You don’t know what “crowded” means until you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with forty other people on a small bus, and then you look out the window and see five more people waiting at the next stop. The lady taking the tickets yells for the people in the back of the bus to squeeze closer, and somehow, those five more people swim through the crowd and grab the nearest pole before the bus takes off again. So many people. My favorite thing I’ve seen in China is the people, and riding the public transportation is a great way to come in contact with them (quite literally).
After braving the public transportation, we arrived at one of the most popular tourist sites in Xi’an, the Muslim Quarter. It’s like the French Quarter in New Orleans, but it’s Muslim and in China. So it’s not really like the French Quarter at all. It’s occupied by a group of Chinese Muslims, the Hui people. The mosque there was built during the Tang dynasty (the “golden age” of China, about 900 AD), when Xi’an was the capital of China. It’s unique because the architecture is not like the domed Arabic mosques, but is distinctly Chinese. In addition to the mosque, the Muslim Quarter boasts of great souvenir shopping and fantastic street food, including lamb’s feet, the typical barbecued squid-on-a-stick, quail eggs, fried breads, and noodles.
After a long and delightful day, we rode the metro back to Xianyang and then hailed a taxi to take us to the orphanage because the buses had already ended their routes for the day. It took a little work to convince a taxi driver to take us all the way out to the orphanage. One taxi driver even pretended that his car had broken down so he could not take us. He drove away less than a minute later, after we all got out of his car J. Finally a young taxi driver agreed, and Meilina, Gill and I returned to Starfish at about 9 pm, absolutely exhausted.
The next day was Sunday, and we had the pleasure of attending church downtown. There is a tiny branch here for foreign (non-Chinese) members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The branch members (two ex-patriate families, several retired couples with the BYU China Teachers Program, and a couple of students studying abroad) were so welcoming. Not only did they asked Meilina and me to bear our testimonies in sacrament meeting, they also fed us lunch! The Church is wonderful because it provides a community for members, no matter where we are. Heavenly Father knows where I am, and He provided a way for me to feel His Spirit 7,000 miles away from my home. After my weekend with Chinese Muslims and Mormons in China, I felt renewed and ready to play with those babies again!
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