Light and Dark

Last night, one of my Chinese colleagues invited me to go walking with her. She wanted me to see an area about 50 minutes by foot from the old university where we live. Spring evenings here are splendid: low humidity and cool breezes. We walked through our campus, then through another campus, down a busy commercial street that looked much like the part of town I live in here, and suddenly we entered a beautiful, upscale neighborhood called the Qujiang New Area. Expensive looking boutiques, interesting restaurants, and fancy condominiums lined the streets. This was a side of Xi'an that I hadn't seen before. But the real surprise was a few blocks away: The Great Tang All Day Mall, a gorgeous pedestrian district, home of the Xi’an Grand Theatre, Xi’an Concert Hall, Qujiang Art Museum and the Qujiang Pacific Film Art Center. All of the buildings are built in a style reminiscent of the Tang Dynasty. Down the center of the street is a boulevard with reproductions of the terra cotta warriors and other famous ancient sculptures, stunning fountains, and wonderful landscaping. And best of all, everything is covered in lights. It's like Christmas on steroids here. There were lights doing things I've never seen lights do: drip like water, for instance, or hang, seemingly from the clouds, in the night sky.

We walked for a long while, and then just in front of me was the ancient Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Originally built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty, it is a Buddhist holy place--a repository (back then, at least) of holy writings brought from India for safekeeping. It was too dark to photograph it, so I'll have to go back. In the area just in front of the pagoda is a park and public square, and last night, and every night, it was filled with people. Children roller skated through an obstacle course of small orange cones, tourists filed off of buses to take flash photos of the famous pagoda, and best of all, dozens of Chinese men and women performed line dances to music blaring from a P.A. System. Row after row of them in perfect synchrony. It was wonderful. My companion says that this is just one of many forms of public exercise in China. We saw a group on campus later doing the same thing, and I asked my friend if I was allowed to join them sometime. Of course, I'm not a dancer, but this looks like big fun, so I might just be willing to look foolish in order to try it.

It was fully dark as we walked back to campus. Crossing the street in Xi'an is a high-risk adventure sport, made even more challenging by darkness. When the walk light turns green, cars turning the corner into the crosswalk NEVER stop, so pedestrians are left to do a frightening start-and-stop dart across very wide streets. My companion said she believed that the cars would stop within a half inch of hitting a person; still, it takes enormous faith to cross a busy street here. In my case, it also took help. My friend took me by the hand several times to scurry me forward, and she grabbed me by the shoulder a couple of times to bring me to a halt as I mindlessly stepped out into traffic. Honestly, this part of the walk made me seriously concerned about sightseeing by foot in bigger cities, like Shanghai. I guess I'll cross that street when I come to it, though.

Here are some pictures from last night's walk. The darkness worked against me, so you'll have to use your imagination a bit here.




































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