20250925 Thursday, September 25, 2025 Back to Beijing and the Summer Palace

20250925 Thursday, September 25, 2025 Back to Beijing and the Summer Palace

We checked out of the JR Marriott Xi’an after an early 5:30 a.m. breakfast and headed back to the Xian airport Terminal 5.  This enormous facility is less than a year old, which would explain why everything is so nice and new.  

Viking’s air department still managed to fail to seat several couples together, despite promises that we would be seated together because Viking had a block of seats.  This did not turn out to be true.  We had random Chinese travelers sprinkled amongst us, and it took a bit of horse trading to be able to sit with our spouses.  Viking gets a failing grade on the air portions of the inland tour extensions.

Screening at the airport was tedious, in part because they use AI to scan all the checked luggage with a 3D scanner and flag anything that might be a potential problem.  However, X-rays can’t tell a lithium battery from an alkaline battery, so Ben’s suitcase got flagged for secondary screening because he had a headlamp and flashlight in his suitcase that on multiple prior screenings were OK.  From now on, all alkaline batteries and anything with a built-in rechargeable battery has to go in carry-on luggage.  They also made us take out umbrellas for them to inspect.  

Be prepared for a detailed pat-down after walking through the magnetometer, including reaching around the inside of my belt.

The flight to Beijing was less than 2 hours and included a light lunch box with some roll-ups and mini-spicy chicken sandwich buns.

We flew into Beijing’s “New” airport south of the city, Daxing Airport (PKX), completed in 2019.  It is nicknamed the Starfish because of the layout of the terminals and is currently built out to handle 75 million passengers.  It is currently less busy than Beijing Capital Airport (PEK), which is currently handling 83 million passengers a year.  

It is designed to be expanded to a capacity of 120 million passengers per year over time with the addition of more runways and terminals.  Despite its newness, we were shocked to be greeted coming down the jetway with two flights of stairs leading down to the tarmac, where we were jammed into crowded buses and then driven quite a long distance to the main terminals.  This was nearly as bad as Frankfurt’s airport, where the buses took more than 20 minutes to get to the main terminal areas.  

Viking had luggage handlers in Beijing who pulled our suitcases off the carousels and took care of delivering them to the hotel, where they would be delivered to our rooms.  

We boarded a bus which took us to a restaurant associated with a Pearl store.  This was an obvious ploy to generate sales, but the restaurant had a decent buffet lunch with both Chinese and some Western food choices.  One of our fellow travelers, who is well versed in pearls, said everything was marked up quite a bit over what they should be.  We didn’t end up buying any souvenirs.  

From the restaurant, it was a short drive to the Summer Palace.  We had visited it with our Travel China Guide small group before the Viking cruise, so we knew what to expect.  However, our Viking guide took us across the lake on a ferry, which was tranquil and provided different views of all the landmarks than what can be seen from the shores.  This was also less fatiguing for those in our group with mobility issues.  We also got different narration regarding the Dowager Empress and the history of how the Palace was constructed.  

We walked from the Marble Boat down the covered walkway, stopping periodically to hear the stories behind several of the paintings on the walkway.  Many had come from the epic tale Journey to the West.  We took a return ferry to conclude our tour and then headed into Beijing rush hour traffic to our hotel.  

We arrived at the hotel earlier than planned, or so we thought.  We disembarked the bus and were escorted by very enthusiastic and friendly staff at the Shangri-La Beijing to an executive reception room on the 64th floor, where they had comfortable leather seats, espresso coffee drinks, and a spectacular view of Beijing’s tallest skyscraper just a few blocks away.  

The staff took our passports as passengers arrived from the elevators, but as they tried to process the first two couples, there came a terrible realization that while the hotel was expecting a busload of Viking passengers, it was not our bus they were expecting.  We had been dropped off at the wrong hotel!

It took about 30 minutes to get another bus back to the hotel to then take us to the correct hotel (Beijing Ritz Carlton) through gridlocked traffic.  The traffic was so bad that Jimmy, our guide, hopped out of the bus and jogged to the hotel as the bus struggled through the traffic.  

He had taken all our passports to exchange them for our room keycards.  It took another 30 minutes to get to the hotel through maddening traffic.  It was 7 p.m. when we finally got up to our rooms.

Ben’s data plan had run out of data without warning.  Unfortunately, China is one of only 3 countries that won’t allow e-SIMs to be activated after arrival in the country.  Nomad had failed big time by failing to notify us that we were running low on data because it is possible to add additional data before the plan runs out, but if it does run out, you can’t reactivate it unless you leave the country and return.  Crazy.  So we ended up having to use our primary cell carrier’s international data pass, which is vastly more expensive ($10/day for up to 5GB, vs $10 for 20GB over 30 days on the eSIM).  But since we only need one day to pay for tonight’s dinner with WeChat Pay, it would have to do.  We had allotted all our remaining Chinese currency to tips for our tour director and driver.  

We walked to a nearby mall’s food court and found a noodle shop where we had some good bowls of noodles for little money.  It cost less than $6 per person, including a beer for dinner.  

We reconfigured our luggage to move heavy things back from our carry-on bags into our large suitcases because in business class, the checked bags can weigh up to 70 pounds or 44kg each.  And we are allowed to check two bags each as well, but Ben will keep his carry-on bag because it has all his prescription medications for the next 2 months in it.  

Tomorrow, our Korea and China adventure will come to an end. We leave the hotel at 6:45 a.m. and fly to Seoul, and then from Seoul back to Seattle.  We arranged for a shuttle to pick us up in Seattle to take us the last 2-1/2 hrs drive from the airport to home.  

20250924 Wednesday, September 24, 2025. Xi’an Terra Cotta Warriors, City Wall, Tang Dynasty Cultural Show

20250924 Wednesday, September 24, 2025. Xi’an Terra Cotta Warriors, City Wall, Tang Dynasty Cultural Show

After breakfast, we made an early start driving to the Museum of the Terra Cotta Soldiers. As we drove through Xi’an rush hour traffic our Guide Jimmy gave us some background history about how the first Emperor of China unified China at the end of the Waring States period in 221 BC. The first Emperor built a grand mausoleum which included a lake of Mercury which ultimately ended up protecting it from pillaging because it was so toxic. But to the east, he buried the massive TCS army to protect himself in the afterlife. 

First Emperor of Qin Dynasty’s coffin floats in a 

lake of mercury in this man made mountain.

During a farmer uprising shortly after the death of the first Emperor, the Terra Soldiers were discovered and destroyed by smashing them and then setting fire to the supporting timbers, causing all the tunnels to collapse. The site was forgotten for over 2000 years. 

In 1974 the site was discovered by farmers digging a well. What they found was nothing like what we see today. They found pottery shards and fragments, but they must have found something remarkable like a large fragment of one of the heads. The Chinese government made the site an archeological preserve and began the work of excavating the site. 

The Terra Cotta Soldiers missed being buried forever by just a few meters because the farmer’s well was at the very limits of the site perimeter. Had the farmers dug just 10 meters to the east, they would have never found the Terra Cotta Army. 

Sign marks site of the original well.

Excavation site #1

Excavation site #3

We had a perfect day for touring in Xi’an with scattered clouds and temperatures in the 70’s.  The site is huge and sees the second most tourists in China, with the Great Wall being number one. 

Excavation site 1 is truly awe inspiring. It is in a building the size of an aircraft hanger and houses rows of reconstructed soldiers and horses in formation as they stood before the site was destroyed. 

Each was painstakingly reassembled from fragments where they originally stood. The excavations and reconstruction work is ongoing.  3D scanning and AI are now being used to speed the reassembly and restoration of pieces. 

The “Lucky Guy”- only intact warrior.

Calvary man and his horse

The General

The only places we encountered severe crowding, pushing and shoving were around three display cases in Excavation site 3 containing “The Lucky Guy” who was the only figure unearthed intact, a General, and a Calvary soldier with his horse. 

 

 

We did notice two changes from when we visited in 2006 and today. One was in Excavation site 2 where they used to have glass walkways directly over some of the excavation pits so you could look straight down just 8 or 10’ below. Now the observation platforms have been moved to the periphery of the building and there are now air conditioned restoration laboratories in the excavation sites. 

The second change was there were two spectacular bronze horse carriages found in the Emperor’s Mausoleum that had been on display.  These have now been moved to a new Museum at the Mausoleum site. 

Our visit today was also more pleasant than in 2006 because it was much cooler inside the excavation sites.  The outside temperature may have made all the difference, or improvements in air conditioning and facilities modernization may have also played a role.

From there, we went to a nearby city where we had lunch and toured a facility which had a display on how the Terra Cotta Warriors were originally produced. They now produce miniatures for the tourist trade and they also have a huge multilevel store selling everything from furniture, silk embroideries, ceramics, and Jewelry. Janet ended up buying another jade bracelet after haggling  the price down 50% and getting a Terra Cotta Soldier figure and jade bead thrown in.  The sales girl swore Janet to secrecy on the price and followed us around after the sale to keep reminding Janet not to disclose the discount.  Later we learned that at this particular store, discounts of more than 20-30% are extremely uncommon.

The lunch was a decent buffet which featured Xi’an “burgers”, which are spicy shredded beef tucked into a pita like roll, and Xi’an hand pulled noodle soup where you could add your own condiments and ingredients from the buffet to customize your meal.  The main buffet had Chinese staples like curry chicken and black pepper beef, along with western salad fixings, Asian vegetables, soft drinks, wine and beer. 

Our next stop was the Xi'an City Wall Museum, which is actually built within a portion of the city’s inner wall near the southwest corner.  Inside the museum, there is a completely enclosed cross section of the wall revealing the different layers of construction and dates associated with different phases of construction and remodeling.  The majority of the structure is rammed earth with facades of stone and brick.  

Outside the museum, a film crew was filming something with a bunch of actors in imperial dynastic costumes.  

We headed up to the top of the wall and walked about a mile to the next towers.  It is impressive how high and thick the wall is.  It as very pleasant walking on the city wall.

Here, as in many historical sites around China, women and girls like to dress up for glamour photos.  

The film crew we ran into outside the City Wall Museum entrance had moved down to the next towers, where we turned around and walked back to the bus. 

 

The perimeter of Xi’an’s city wall is 8 miles.  It is notable that in 2006, just about anywhere we went, we would get swamped by aggressive hawkers.  During this visit, there were only a couple of places where hawkers were even mildly annoying, and these were mostly around temples.  There were some on the way in and out of the Terra Cotta Soldier Museum, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as in 2006, or in Egypt. 

 
The bus took everyone back to the Hotel.  There were originally 8 of our group that were going to the Tang Dynasty Cultural dinner and show, but two decided to back out because they were too tired to sit through a show.  We combined with another Viking group to fill a bus, and headed to a dinner theater.  Actors in costume were standing out in front of the theater and the theater marquis said Welcome Viking VIP’s.  

Inside the theater, a similar message was on the huge backdrop of the stage.  
We had excellent seats as our bus was the first Viking tour bus to arrive at the theater.  The dinner was good both in quality and quantity.  The did individual servings so there was no fussing with family style plates, but they did seem to rush through the many courses in order to get our dinner service completed before the show started, and they did manage to achieve that goal. 

Below us was another VIP group (not Viking) with a different banquet set up.  They had hot pots and cold appetizers sitting on their tables, but they arrived much later than us, and had to eat most of their dinners in the dark while the show was in progress.  

The show was a beautiful display of Tang Dynasty dancing and music.  The dancing involved lots of pretty girls in very pretty costumes in routines that looked more like ballet than folk dancing.  They were graceful, poised and polished.  The music was pleasant and dramatic when it needed to be, and it was very much like the Siegfield Follies in some ways.  

Between dance numbers, musicians would take to the stage an demonstrate some unusual but very expressive music with some unusual instruments.  One man played an instrument called a Sheng, which is what you might get if you crossed a harmonica, accordion and saxophone and compressed it into the size of a soprano saxophone.  

Another man used a suona, which is a double reed instrument with a brass bell on the end combined with throat singing, circular breathing and an extremely unusual way of making high pitched bird call like sounds with just his vocal cords, and upper airway.

  
There was also a remarkably expressive percussion ensemble that did two very different numbers with one being light and comical, while the other was dramatic.

It was a very worthwhile and entertaining evening to cap off a very long and busy day. We certainly made the most of our very shot time in Xi'an.  We got our checked bags out by 11pm, and we leave the hotel at 6:30am tomorrow to fly to Beijing.