Xi'an

Xi’an left Seabass and me with some mixed feelings. Xi’an was no Shanghai, and it’s certainly fair to point out that Shanghai was no Xi’an. Basically, we went to Xi’an because it's very old and had a hell of a heyday, on the scale of Cairo, Egypt or Rome, Italy.

In fact, the city sits in an area considered by many the other cradle of civilization, the one in the Middle East being far from civilized as of late. In other words, the area of Xi’an was one of the first places in the world to have humans cover their dongxi (that’s Chinese for your thingy) and produce food, writing and art.

While it’s tough to critique Xi’an when it comes to significance within the course of human events, regretfully, the same can’t be said for those wishing to have drunken blast here. There are bars and clubs to socialize in and have a good time, but they are too contrived and leave little to creativity, which is what gimmicky bastards like us are all about. The establishments we saw cost too much money, the women were likely on the clock and there were five-foot bouncers at every table eager to glare your fun away. Obviously, we could have overlooked the best bar in the world, but I have my doubts.


I say this to warn those hoping to find paragraphs dedicated to drunken madness. If that’s the only thing you are looking for, stop reading, or perhaps reread Seabass’s Shanghai story because it’s so good. In Xi’an, we got drunk and had some fun, but it wasn’t up to standard. Instead, we got an unavoidable history lesson. If you want to learn a bit about our trip and how old this place is, read on…











—The hole-tel

Before I get into what we did, I want to point out that our first night in Xi’an went badly. Our hotel offered all the amenities to make a hotel disturbing and uncomfortable. When we first walked in, things seemed passable. The counters and lounge were clean, a bit outdated, but not unkempt. The one hint of the hotel being a lesser establishment was the fact that 40-something men were sleeping on the lounge couches, some with their feet higher than their heads and cigarettes dangling out of their mouths. Yet, we shrugged this off and checked in.

On the way to our room, the halls were leak-stained, gloomy and smoky. In fact, a thick smoke sat throughout the city. The smoke turned brilliant reds and yellows into black and white and gray. Apparently, it was due to dead, immovable air and the fact that the region’s farmers burn their leftover crops during the fall. Yet, while we had an explanation for the unhealthy haze, it was strange to see the smoke indoors. In the states, smoke alarms would have been blaring. This hotel didn’t have any so there was nothing to worry about.

The smoke became the least of our concerns, however, once we stepped inside our room. When we opened the door, a horrendous stench wafted into the hall. It smelled like industrial strength cat piss. The odor brought tears to our eyes. I, amazingly, was about to accept the stench. I think because I was afraid to walk back through the long, eerily smoky hallways.

Seabass trumped my fear though with one simple, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The front desk gave us a new room, this time with red-stained sheets. Optimistically, I assumed this was rust. Then, there was the bathroom that we were afraid to enter…and the carpet that was dry yet felt wet if you stepped on it barefoot (I found this inexplicable and kept trying to prove it was wet, but never succeeded)…and outside our window, some machine, something along the lines of an antique HEMI engine, that rattled noisily around the clock. But, at least we could breath.

—Outnumbered


Seabass and I eagerly left the hotel first thing in the morning and caught a bus to the Terracotta Warriors. Both books and people told us we should visit the archeological site. There, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, apparently wouldn’t be caught dead without an army. So he had more than 8,000 mud-baked warriors, horses and chariots buried with him. The site is over two thousand years old.


Well, it turned out China had the same trip in mind as us, which made sense because we were traveling during a Chinese national holiday. Every family and their allotted kid decided to visit the Terracotta Warriors for their vacation. This was not a problem for us, we love our fellow man, but the terracotta army stood no chance against such an army of tourists.

The only thing that maybe prevented a complete route of the terracotta army was the third great force at the museum: the vendors. The vendors numbered in the hundreds.

As you approach the archeological site, the path includes city blocks of vacant, new brick buildings with no sign of ever being put to use. The vendors stood outside of these buildings, each one selling the exact same shoddy wares. They hounded us with hellos and “buy, buy, buy.” Someday, I imagine, these country folk will be pushed away by middle-class vendors investing in the new storefronts. Then, the middle-class vendors will sell the exact same things, block after block after block, just like the poor vendors do today.

When we finally arrived at the museum, sure enough, the life-size soldiers stood frozen in rows, impressing the world with their eternal immobility. I was as impressed as the next guy. However, the structure that housed the site was notable too. The day-lit warehouse easily outstretched the length of two football fields to protect the terracotta soldiers, as well as the endless stream of Chinese tourists.

—The rest of the Xi’an affair


Suffice it say, the next day Seabass and I abandoned the miserable slum and upgraded to a place within the city center. We explored the city with more ease and, during the evenings, drank in the town square between two impressive poly-dynastic structures, one called the Bell Tower and the other the Drum Tower.

Also, we befriended a Chinese couple named Xin and Sam. Sam, we would later learn, is a great dancer. An accountant, he wears skin tight turtlenecks and peach t-shirts. Watching him dance in a club is a site worth coming to China for in itself. He flops and flips around like Pinocchio under the strings of Geppetto. Xin joined Sam for a vacation in Xi’an, I think to see if he was worth a long term relationship. I hope it works out for them.

At one point we four rented bikes and rode around the walls of Xi’an. The walls, built during the early Ming dynasty, are about 50 feet high and 60 feet wide. The structure is about 9 miles around. For a few bucks you can give yourself an ass-massage, bumping over the bricks that make the 1400 year-old wall. This experience was definitely worth every yuan.


On a different day, Seabass developed a very close relationship with our toilet because he ate (we think) rotten dog that he bought on the street. I decided to leave Seabass at the hotel so Sam and I could head for a famous mountain a couple hours outside Xi’an called Hua Shan. Hua Shan is a sacred Chinese mountain with a reputation for being both a breathtaking and somewhat dangerous climb. Sam couldn’t do it, but I managed to convince a phobic, and perhaps lazy, Xin to make an attempt for Hua Shan too. We embarked for the mountain before dawn.

When you travel in China to tourist sites, there are two methods: the hard to find and difficult to use city and provincial buses; and the private buses that can’t wait to pull you inside their vehicle and prey on your foreigner vulnerabilities. I try my damnedest to avoid the latter, but Sam and Xin climbed onto one of these sharks because the legitimate way was too much trouble to figure out.

For a little less than five bucks we caught a ride to the town below the base of Hua Shan. Then we paid another 10 bucks for a tram up the first half of the mountain, and another couple bucks for a ride to the base of the mountain. This is typical in China, no one thing is expensive, but you get nickel and dimed until you end up spending a day’s paycheck.

The ride up the gondola was awesome. Hua Shan surprised me with its ruggedness and height, especially since the area around Xi’an is flat. The granite cliffs are a few thousand feet high and cut sharply to the base of the mountain. The gondola takes you up to the North Peak, the lowest of the five peaks. From there we hiked up toward the West Peak using an iron chain which serves as a guide. Looking up the mountain from the North Peak, the trail stretched almost vertically to the higher West Peak. On the path, thousands of Chinese pilgrims trudged toward the sky.

No matter the height or difficulty of the path, the vendors, sure enough, were there to sell trinkets. Also, on Hua Shan, there are several Daoist temples as well as a couple hotels. The cost I think would be worth it if you had the time to stay because the mountain is so unusual and beautiful.


I don’t know any statistics, but I imagine more than a few Chinese took a step in the wrong direction during a photo op on Hua Shan. One spot actually made my throat dry from fear. On the East Peak, there exists a path that is no more than two feet wide. The mountain side brushes one shoulder and falls away a thousand feet from the other. At the end of the 150 foot path, a cave ensconces a Daoist shrine. There, before the shrine, a monk sat on a swinging chain that separated sky from mountain. He was relaxed and indifferent to the drastic nothingness below him. I tried to talk to him but failed. The only information I managed to gather was that I shouldn’t take a picture of the shrine.

By nightfall Xin, Sam and I returned to Xi’an. Seabass recovered from his illness and we all went out to drink beer in the streets. Seabass brought his guitar and played for some crowds and even befriended a 15 year-old boy that probably hadn’t seen a bath in weeks, or longer. Seabass gave him a sticker of his band Cast of Characters and sang for him. He wouldn't accept anything else. What he did take, he seemed overjoyed with, and I think was conscious of meeting a person who acknowledged him with sincerity.

Later on, Seabass and I were drunk, I didn’t have the camera securely held, and he accidentally kicked it from my hand when I was about to take a picture of his funny pose. The camera broke and we were both bummed. That more or less concluded our time in Xi’an. Again, it was no Shanghai, but then again, Shanghai is no Xi’an. Now, we need to get his camera fixed. Peace.

Shanghai'd

DISCLAIMER: The correct order and validity of the events described in this entry decay rapidly each day.

“Nĭmen yŏu mĕi yŏu jī tā?” The slender Chinese airline stewardess asked.

“Yŏu.” I said.

Damn. Busted already. She noticed that I hastily stashed my guitar in the little closet between first and second class, the place where attendants store their own luggage. I had put the guitar there because all the overhead bins in our crappy, windowless seats were full. Where else could it go? She continued to talk to us in Chinese and Brusie and I continued to say “dui, dui, hao, hao,” (yes, yes, good, good…trying to play dumb). She wasn’t leaving.

Then in broken English she said, “No. You both need to follow me.”

Crap. It’s just a guitar, throw it below deck, I thought. Brusie was pretty sure we were getting kicked off the plane for something. She grabbed my guitar and put down in front of the first two seats of the first class. She said: “You two have to sit here and watch the guitar the whole flight.”

First class tickets for a low class price, that’s how we travel. Oh and always travel with a gimmick. In this case my guitar was traveling with two.

The rest of the flight and the sketchy walk through the airport gauntlet, riddled with scammers, went smooth. We got a cab and headed into Shanghai.

Our metered taxi pulled down the kebab smoke-filled, neon-lit, half pedestrian, half 60 KPH side street that we would call home for the next four days. We were pumped. It was our first time traveling outside of Qingdao, which was starting to feel like home. We were also meeting up with my good friends Alisa, who currently lives in Shanghai, and her brother Stas who was flying in from Moscow to party with us, and as he told his work, some business stuff (his company produces fire extinguishers), so he could get the flight paid for.

It was Saturday morning at 1 am. The second our taxi pulled away, Stas jumped out of the next taxi. The perfectly timed sequence of events in Shanghai began to unfold.

“I gotta, ah big bottle of Jameson, and a two huge bottles of the best Russian Vodka.” he said in his deep Russian accent. “You want me to get it?”

I reintroduced Stas and Brusie. They knew each other, but only from wasted Cast of Characters shows and annihilated Bellingham house parties. We checked into our room with no windows (although there was a curtain with a wall behind it). Hey, we weren’t planning on spending anytime in our hotel, so who needs a window? We dropped our bags and hit the street to down some Chinese food and ganbei-ed beers ‘til 4 am.

— Day 1 – I’m pretty sure

Not having windows in your hotel room is unbelievably annoying. We woke up disoriented. Was it 4:30 am? 8? 10? 10 pm? Saturday? Sunday? 2006? 1984? 1588? What the hell was going on?


Our first hangover in Shanghai was successful. It turned out to only be 11 a.m. on Saturday, 2006, and we were ready to hit the town. It was also time to start the Stas wake-up process. I lived with Stas for a month in Moscow, and one thing Stas hates to do is get up before 2 p.m. With some prodding and a “we are going to get something to eat. We are heading to the Bund in a half-hour, be ready to go or we are leaving without you.” he gave us a moan.

We hit the tourist centre of Shanghai, the Bund, with Stas in tow. Strutting up and down the boardwalk between the Huangpu River and historic governmental buildings, we were constantly invited to purchase two wheel rollerblades that hook onto your shoes, dancing worms, Chinese scrolls, popcorn, acrobatic children, coconut milk, Mao pins, crap, umbrellas (it wasn’t raining, yet), glass models of Shanghai’s most famous buildings, shit that you cant tell what it is, art, and their poverty. We folded on the coconut milk.

An hour later it started raining. Everyone who was selling anything before were now selling umbrellas for 8 Yuan ($1). We couldn't stand that everyone wanted to sell us unprepared tourists umbrellas. We opted to go without.

We met up with Stas’s sister Alisa and spent time sliding on the soaking, slippery, bund bricks. Her boyfriend Zach was getting off work and we headed over to Shanghai’s new expensive district to meet him. This section of town is called the French Concession. Zach and Alisa treated us to a wonderful meal of famous dumplings, which originated in southern China.

A ten minute walk from the Gucci and Starbuck-lined French Concession we found ourselves in Shanghai’s old town and antique market where the given motto was “order antique today, it will be ready for you tomorrow.” Next to the antique market was the insect and flower market, where we experienced our first cricket kung-fu.

The Trump Tower of cricket fighting, reminiscent of a county fair 4-H pig stable, smelling just as bad, and provoking you to step just as careful, was packed with animals of all kinds. Dogs, cats, birds that could talk Chinese better than me, bushels of worms or caterpillars that looked like they were trapped in ginger roots, turtles, and thousands of tin cans with piercing cricket chirps...


Middle to elderly-aged men huddled around foldable tables, complete with interrogation-style lamps that hung from the ceiling and lined the perimeter of the back half of the building. The men were hooting and hollering like Pac-10 University students at the Rose Bowl. Brusie got that wild look in his eye like there was something going on here that we needed to be apart of. We walked over to a Chinese man sitting on his squat stool made of crossed wood and fabric. In front of him, a random assortment of lidded tin cans, intricately decorated shish kabob-looking wooden sticks, tubes reminiscent of Kodak 35mm film canisters, and quarter-sized porcelain plates and bowls.

After a 15 minute briefing, we learned that we couldn’t buy the crickets to fight. We could only place our bets. But before doing so we would need to feed the cricket using the previously mentioned wooden sticks and miniature plates. After that we needed to find a female cricket that our prize fighter was attracted too and have them make sweet cricket love. Only then would our cricket be ready to strap on the gloves, get taped up, and jump in the Tupperware ring.

Not willing to put the time in to become a true cricket trainer, we opted to leave it to the experts and just watch a couple of bouts. The three rows of huddled Chinamen made it difficult for me to see what was actually happening. Brusie, being a foot taller than everyone there had the press box view and between the both of us we agreed that there really wasn’t much going on when they were fighting. The cricket’s trainers would prod them with their feeding sticks, the crickets would lock their front legs and then the crowd would go wild. Someday, I’m sure we will have a better understanding of why people devote their lives to cricket fighting, until then we would hold off on any betting…


I Love Shanghai was the name of the bar we headed to that night. It was owned by one of Alisa’s friends, a guy named Jeff, a Seattle Pacific University alumnus. That Saturday night Jeff’s special was an open bar from 9pm till midnight. Open bars usually include well drinks and beers. Jeff offered anything we wanted. Shots, mixed drinks, beers, wine, everything. The dim red-walled, couch-lined modern bar located directly underneath the Bund in the center of Shanghai attracted mostly expatriates and a few locals.

I remember going outside and maybe talking to someone, then puking, and then going back in for more. I think it was around 11pm. I don’t remember leaving the bar, but when we were about to get in the cab I remember turning around and there was a posse of Chinese teenagers that wanted to fight us for some reason, but then from what I heard, our Russian connection, Stas, stopped them.

It was midnight and we were on to the next bar. It was called Bon Bon, I think. It was Formula-1 race weekend in Shanghai, and this bar was the spot to be for the F-1 fans. Brusie made the grandest of entrances and gave everyone an air-guitar/type F-1 driving show in front of the F-1 racecar parked in the lobby. The club was a maze of dance floors, lights, blaring techno music, several bars, and hundreds of people. Some of the female employees were dressed up in Tron outfits and turned heads as they glowed though the club.



Before I knew it, it was late and I had no idea where anyone was except for Stas. Brusie was nowhere to be found until somehow Stas and I took a cab home, took the elevator to the 5th floor and…well, well, well, what do we have here? I had the key to our hotel room and Brusie didn’t realize that. He had come home and was passed out in the hallway in front of our door. We took some pics and passed out.

— Day 2 – Give or take a day



Hangover was in full swing that morning, O.K., afternoon. Stas was still sleeping and Brusie and I headed off to the Shanghai Museum, located just behind our hotel in the center of Renmin Square. It started drizzling just as we stepped inside of the multilevel facility.

Every floor had two or three themes such as a pottery room, a currency room, wood carving room, or scroll-painting room. Each room had examples of their respective theme dating back to antiquity. We saw currency that was used in China 6,000 years ago!!! And I thought I was getting old. The currency was rusty and shaped like something between a door key and an machete or a spearhead. The evolution of Chinese society was laid out before us. A couple of hours later, we exited the building to the north.

It was still lightly drizzling, but again not wanting to buy an umbrella for $1, we didn’t mind getting a little wet. A strange pattern on the ground had caught my eye. It was located in the middle of the square, had the diameter of the Seattle Center Musical Fountain and was surrounded by steps and about 600 Chinese people. The glossy, colorful, tiled pattern on the ground that resembled an outline of the continents, but not really, was drawing me in. I just kept thinking “What the hell is that?” Some Chinese lady was saying something over a loud speaker and the Chinese people were just milling around about 50 feet away from this object. I started walking closer to the object and at the corner of my eye I could see Brusie headed the same direction.

My left foot was up and extending forward. We were about to step onto this piece of art when, WHOOSH! Water shot straight out about 30 feet in the air. Brusie and I were two seconds away from being the stupidest foreigners 600 Shanghai-ese had ever seen.

We looked at each other:

“Holy shit that was close, I was just about to step on that to see what it was.” I said.

“I saw all the Chinese people staring at us, so I was headed to the center and I was just gonna stand there and wave at them.” Brusie said.

After a good laugh we realized that the lady talking over the intercom was probably telling people to stand back cause the center of this circle was about to erupt!

“Dammit.” Brusied said. “Now I kinda wish we would have gotten caught in the fountain, that would have been caught on camera and we would be famous in no time.”

It think it was Sunday night and we met up with Stas and Alisa for beers at I Love Shanghai. We tore up that bar until 3 in the morning when we headed to some restaurant by Alisa’s house, and then got home somehow. We must have wandered around our street for awhile because I have some great pictures of Brusie looking bewildered with a Chinese flag stuffed in the buttons of his polo shirt.

— Day 3 – Monday?

This day was focused on one thing. Making it to Zapata’s bar at 10:00 p.m. when they served free beer until 11:00 p.m. Brusie and I got up, and went though the routine we had done the past couple of days. Go get some food, some water, make sure Stas was still sleeping, go do something, meet up with Stas and his sister later in the day.

Brusie and I eventually ended up at the Shanghai Art Museum, located just north of our almost-famed fountain. This was one of the coolest modern art museums either of us had ever seen. The exhibits were not explicitly interactive, but being the attention whores that we are, we found ways to make the Chinese tourists laugh at us more than they already did. It was great.

Alisa met up with us at the hotel again just as Stas was getting up. Probably around 3pm. We took the Shanghai subway to Pudong (east side of the Huangpu River) to ascend the Jinmao Tower. It is the tallest building in China (420.5 meters or 1,402 feet) and the fourth tallest building in the world. From the subway station to the tower was about half a mile. The rain decided that was the perfect time to pounce. We were drenched by the time we got to the tower. We had originally planned to get Bloody Marys but we were so cold that we had to get coffee on the 54th floor, the first floor of the Hyatt (the highest hotel in the world).

After a wonderful $4 coffee in an elegant room straight out of Star Wars we took three different elevators to get up to the Cloud 9 Bar located on the 87th floor. Nothing like a $6 Bloody Mary at the top of one of the tallest buildings in the world. Even though it was cloudy, the view was incredible. You could see incomplete Shanghai World Finance Building which was constructed to about the 60th floor. It is soon to be the tallest building in China.


Our Bloody Marys were downed and we headed over to Alisa and Zach’s apartment located in this complex, which resembled Bellevue Square. I was starting to get nervous about getting to the bar on time as it was getting late and we still had not eaten dinner. And then, like a nod from god that everything was going be all right, Zach came though the door carrying four pizzas. We ninja-turtled the pizzas like we have been eating only Chinese food for the past month, and we were out the door.

We walked into the bar a little past 10. The place was huge. There was a tented outside that felt like an Afro-Caribbean drinking bungalow and a multi-floored inside reminiscent of a wild west saloon. “Well, free beer, let’s see if it’s true.”

I awkwardly walked up to the bar. “One beer please.”

“Holy crap. I just got free beer at a bar,” I said to myself. It was a huge beer to. Carlsberg maybe? Brusie and I pounded one, then another. Five minutes to 11. We had time for one more, so we thought. Bar time had killed our free drinking buzz — but, no matter, the beers kept flowing like they were free. Every other song they played that night was Tequila, whereupon female bar employees with bottles of Tequila would jump on top of the bar dance and call us out to pour tequila down our throats from ten feet above us.

— Day Last

Ouch. Me no likey Tequila. Really, hungover, we dragged ourselves to a couple of Buddhist temples around 2pm. The hangovers decreased our attention spans to that of first graders. Very uninterested we headed back to our hotel for a nap.

Finally it was our last night in Shanghai. Ladies night at I Love Shanghai, perfect. We started in Stas’ room where we drank a bottle of his finest Beluga Vodka and a big bottle of Jameson. Stas’ sister met us at the hotel excited to baby sit again. Stas had another bottle of Beluga Vodka. We decided to bring it to the bar as a gift to Jeff, and in hopes that he would want to open it and drink it with us so we wouldn’t have to pay the non-discounted drink prices at I Love Shanghai.

The last bottle of Vodka went down sometime that night. We went somewhere and somehow ended up back at the hotel.

— Day get me the hell outta Shanghai (is this the Asian Vegas?)-


Lunch with Stas was great. We laughed about the craziness of the last couple days and said our goodbyes. Brusie and I took the Shanghai subway over to Pudong where we jumped on the new Maglev train and hit a top speed of 431 km/h on our way to the airport.

No first class when we got on the plane, but some much needed sobriety. Xi’an lay just ahead.