Travel News

We finished our time in Xi'an by walking around the Big Wild Goode Pagoda, and biking on the ancient city wall. We got quite an education on Buddism, and all of the gods that help Buddha (and therefore have their own little pagoda). Chinese see Buddhism as a way of connecting the heavens and the earth through various means.

The Xi'an ancient wall is about 10 stories tall and about 60 feet wide at the top (over 100 feet wide at the bottom), and it makes for a great vantage point to see some areas of the city easy by riding a bike.

Guilin is a more rural city, and the surrounding area is definetly rural and the real China. We boarded a small sightseeing boat and sopent 4 hours cruising the Li River. This is the scenery that China likes to put on postcards. Hills, lush vegitation, chinese working in the rice fields. It was a little rainy for the cruise, but the scenes are great. we ended up in Yangshou, a town of about 300,000 and tonight we ewnt to a magnificent theater production on the water with lights and acting called Liu Sa Jie produced by the same man who did the opening of the Olympic games in Beijing. It was awesome.