Saturday, April 13

Observations.

While at the Beijing Domestic Airport I had some time to People-watch and made the following observations:

- The staff in the airport are friendly, happy and helpful, to everybody regardless of race. The security people in particular.

- The passengers are the same as in any modern airport except they dress better, seriously, the dressing down and unkempt look seems to not be in fashion here. The worst dressed people seem to be white.

- The toilets: We in the west could take lessons from the Chinese on how to keep toilets clean and comfortable in a public building.

- Most signage and announcements are in English as well as Chinese. We are made to feel like welcome visitors.

- The flight, on Eastern China Airlines was on an Airbus A321. Clean as a whistle, lunch was served on a one hour and 40 minute flight. Excellent service, landed at Xian airport, immaculate, big, new.

Hi Folks, please take the time to read this about my blog.

Not sure if I can continue to have a blog going under these circumstances. I hope you can tough it out with me.

My iPad seems to have difficulty functioning properly. I think a lot of it is the Internet system here as well as iPad limitations.

Also I think there is some form of filtering of messages going on.

Sometimes it sends but most time not. Also I seem to lose typed messages so I sometimes have no idea what I have sent. Text goes easier than photos it seems. There is no pattern. So, sometimes there may be no pictures. .

SATURDAY. It is 5:30 and we are wide awake having gone to bed around 8:00.

We had a wonderful flight and we met again by our guide and a private car. We toured a bit visiting two sites: one the dig site with a wonderful museum now over it,

the other a a museum of artifacts found during the dig. Both are of a funeral site of an earlier dynasty than Terracotta Warriors but only discovered in 1990 when they were digging a road to the airport for the Olympics.

It seems that this country can do things on a massive scale without fuss and bother.

Next we had dinner which was great, there are some very nice Chinese foods we are finding.

Then to the Sofitel Hotel in the centre of town where we were upgraded two levels to a Mini-Suite. Very posh indeed.

Later today, Saturday, we go to the actual Terracotta Warriors site and some other attractions. This city of 8,000,000 is prettier and has much more parks and green space than Beijing, much warmer too.

Eastern China Air, A321 plane, spotless, good service and lunch on a 1 1/2 hr. flight

On the flight they even had head pads, long gone on most flights at home

Dinner remains

At the restaurant. Doug covets these!

Nice work they do here

Horses as they were found

Miniatures

Reproduction of the chariot

Restored horses

The arms were wooden and they were fully clothed when new, then buried

Some of them

The main site. Overwhelming

Also the main building