Life in the imperial city of Xi’an

(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).

LINK TO THE ITINERARY

Our eagle’s nest, as I call our bed under the roof from now on, is so cozy that we find it hard to leave it. We would love to spend the whole day there to rest up from yesterday’s 130-kilometer drive. The chirping of a songbird comes through the window. He sits in a cage hanging from the neighboring window. According to tradition, the Chinese have been keeping birds as pets since the 5th century. “A beautiful song,” it goes through my head. However, just a few days ago I read an article about the extinction of songbirds. In this context, according to some researchers, the Chinese police confiscated two million captive songbirds during a raid in southeast China in 2011. Among them were 20,000 willow buntings, which are threatened with extinction. Based on projections, it is estimated that several million willow buntings are caught in Southeast Asia every year. The large number of illegally hunted songbirds do not end up in a cage, but in the cooking pot. The sparrow-sized bunting is considered a delicacy in China.

The beautiful song of the bird mingles with the sounds of life beginning in front of our home. We leave the house enthralled by the strange sounds. We now walk through the narrow alleyways of the district, where cars and mopeds rarely stray. We come across a few old men hanging the cages of their songbirds in the trees on a green area of the old historic city wall. They sit down next to it and listen to the wonderful chirping. We have been told that there are even singing competitions in which the proud bird owners let their protégés compete against each other. How the country has changed. In 1958, the Chinese government decided to exterminate all sparrows in the country because they were blamed for eating the seeds. As a result, 2 billion birds were destroyed. As the locusts now had an easy time of it, they destroyed the country’s crops in a short space of time. The result was the greatest famine in the history of the earth in which, as already described, around 45 million people starved to death.

Just a few hundred meters further on, strange music reaches our ears to which women and men dance in sync. We watch for a while, then walk on and come across a group of women and men who seem to be engaged in a graceful slow sword fight without opponents, accompanied by traditional Chinese music. Because Tanja and I took several Tai Chi courses in Germany and therefore know how difficult it is to perform the movements perfectly, we are fascinated by the group. You can see the years of consistent training. Her movements are aesthetic, almost elegant. Every single one of them seems to be centered and highly concentrated. Tai Chi is considered to be an internal martial art that does not focus on the raw exercise of strength, but on a kind of meditation and flow of slow, harmonious movement. Tai Chi is used for relaxation and health, but also for self-defense and personal development. As the first traders begin to set up their flying stalls around the sword dancers, the peaceful atmosphere changes and prompts us to move on.

Small cookshops, restaurants, beautiful stores selling kitsch as well as beautiful art objects, calligraphy and paintings, tea and egg stoves, fruit vendors and much more amazed us on the way back to our accommodation. Many Chinese tourists wander from stall to stall, all of which are now set up. Each of them wants to buy a souvenir of their vacation. Almost 100 million Chinese now travel abroad every year, displacing the Germans from their position as world champions. Hundreds of millions, however, are traveling in their own country, which is absolutely noticeable in a place like this.

After a delicious lunch, at a Chinese restaurant for a change, we retire to our guest house. We enjoy a real cappuccino in the conservatory on the roof of the house. From up here we have an interesting view of the old imperial city, although it too is soon plagued by heavy smog every day. (up to 400 micrograms per cubic meter) “Where’s your dog?” asks Bruce, one of the two owners of the youth hostel. “In the room,” replies Tanja, “Oh, you really have to take him up to the roof with you,” says the dog lover, which is why Ajaci often accompanies us from this point on and thus becomes the darling of the house with the staff and guests…

The live coverage is supported by the companies Gesat GmbH: www.gesat.com and roda computer GmbH www.roda-computer.com The satellite telephone Explorer 300 from Gesat and the rugged notebook Pegasus RP9 from Roda are the pillars of the transmission.