Time Moves Quickly

Wow, it’s hard to believe that in less than two weeks I’ll be home and suffering from jetlag. The end of this past week was jam packed. Today I was planning on just doing nothing, but 6 ½ hours walking around town isn’t exactly doing nothing.

I actually slept in until about 7 am this morning. Oh it was so nice! It’s a good thing I woke up then, because shortly thereafter a whole series of firecrackers were set off across the lane at the apartment building for staff of the university. Firecrackers are set off here for any occasion for well wishes: weddings (which was the reason for today’s round), moving in to a new apartment/home,

birthdays, a cool day, a good dish of pork…(okay, I made those last two up). The point is, they set them off continually and never at opportune times, i.e. they shoot them off between 7 am to 8 am. At 10 I met up with Rene and Katrina and Rene’s Chinese student, Sharon, to go into town. We had two main goals: find silk and pick up our tailor made clothing. Even though this is the end/beginning of the famous Silk Road, silk is hard to find here. Silk isn’t particularly made here, nor is “Silk Road” a particularly historically accurate term. That term wasn’t used to describe the trade between China until the early 1900s when a German archaeologist by the name of Richtofen (the Red Baron’s uncle) used the term. Silk was just one of many items going from China towards the West. Anyway, Rene had found a blog entry online about this ONE shop that sells quality silks in Xi’an. So off we went. It was in a huge hangar-like building with stall after stall of fabrics. Sharon just asked people where the silk store was and they pointed us in the right direction. It’s hard to believe that there’s only one in the entire place. I couldn’t believe the great selection that they had. I got two different silks, Katrina got three and Rene got eight! The asking price was 65 Yuan per meter, but we were able to get it for 50 Yuan ($7.35 per meter). That’s an amazing deal for silk.

By the time we were done silk shopping it was already almost one o’clock, so we had lunch of spicy pork noodles and plum juice. Total cost: 7 Yuan per person. The noodles were the right thing to hit the spot. Then it

was off in the rain to the Muslim quarter to find our tailor and pick up our clothing. Walking through the narrow streets of the Muslim quarter was a challenge with vendors lined on both sides of the street and in the middle plus throngs of people carrying umbrellas AND bikes, carts, motorcycles, cars, etc. also competing for space. In China, the bigger the vehicle, the more right of way you have. The pedestrian is last in that pecking order, even in a supposed pedestrian area. It’s crazy, but you learn very quickly to constantly listen for horns. We made it to the tailor and got our clothing. It turned out so great. It’s amazing that such quality clothing could be made so quickly and so cheaply! After they

packaged up our clothing nice and neatly, we continued our wandering to find more gifts for people back home. I bought a lot of stuff today, but will refrain from mentioning any of it because some of you may be getting the stuff.

Finally we made it home by about five o’clock this afternoon. I am not going anywhere the rest of the evening. I’m just relaxing with a cold beer, chatting with my roommate George from Okemos and blogging for you.