Fuddland
The Muslim Quarter, in the north-west of downtown Xi’an, is the place to go if you want to buy some nice-looking souvenirs, antiques and trinkets—from local crafts such as intricately-cut patterns in paper and jewellery, to novelty items such as Mao Zedong watches and playing cards. All the haggling can make you hungry—luckily there are plenty of restaurants and street vendors selling cheap and delicious food on the supposedly-pedestrianised road perpendicular to the shopping street. New dishes for me included yangrou paomo and hu la tang, as well as the Xi’an speciality, candied dried fruit [beware the mixed bags: they also contain thick slices of ginger, which may be mistaken for pineapple at first glance and lead to nasty taste-bud-related surprises when you bite a chunk out of it].
Tucked away Tardis-like off the narrow winding market street is Daqingzhen Si—the Great Mosque—the largest mosque in China, dating back to 742. I was slightly confused by its backwards [I thought] layout until it was pointed out that China is east of Mecca, so they pray to the west in this part of the world. Still in use today, it’s surprisingly peaceful considering its proximity to the bustle of the eateries and stalls, and resolutely Chinese in its design: I really was expecting to see a golden-domed building like the London Central Mosque that I’ve seen many times [and I’m quite sure once visited on a school trip, although that was possibly a different mosque], and was a little disappointed to be presented with a traditionally-Chinese structure instead.
The two large museums in Xi’an that I visited—Beilin Bowuguan and Shanxi Lishi Bowuguan—both contained an impressive display of the region’s renowned history. I found the former more interesting simply because I saw stone tablets detailing conversations with Confucius, the first record of Christianity in China, and the first Chinese dictionary [so it claimed], all displayed with uncharacteristic subduedity. [I think I’ve just made up the word for the quality of being subdued.]
The History Museum houses a nicely-chronological collection of locally-found pottery and metalwork, and it was nice to really see the skills of the craftspeople becoming more and more refined over the hundreds-of-years, although perhaps the most striking thing for me was realising that we, us human type people, seem to have an innate sense of beauty such that the designs on pottery dating back thousands of years are still pleasing to the modern-day eye; we all still like a nice, simple geometric pattern on our breakfast bowls don’t we?
