Xi'an, China

My flight with Sichuan Air arrived at 1.30am. I was the only white foreigner on the plane and over the next 6 days in Xi'an I saw hardly any English-speaking tourists, even at the key tourist sights.

The airport is about 35 km out of the city. What struck me as we flew over miles and miles of city tracked by seemingly endless grids of brightly lit wide highways is the sheer scale of development that has gone on here over the last few decades. The plane taxied for ages across tarmac past several terminal buildings and hundreds of planes belong to a myriad of different carriers. Heading into the city along one of those highways, I kept thinking I could see hills on the horizon until I worked out that I was seeing was the lights twinkling at the top of scattered forests of multi-storey towers. Seemed like 12-lane roads all the way, roads lined all the way with street lights decorated with red lights in arrangements resembling Chines lanterns or tassels.

The total state power bill must be beyond astronomical. They must have to stagger the turning on of street lights in the evenings to avoid a massive fuse blowout. I saw quite a few old roof-mounted solar water-heater panels, but no other evidence of solar, yet official figures say 30% of China’s power now comes from solar sources. On the other hand, all but a very few of the motor-bikes and other two and three wheeled vehicles were electric (blessedly quiet, but they sneak up behind you on the footpaths). Most of the buses were electric too. I didn’t see any public charging stations, so I’m not sure how that happens – maybe people take the batteries home with them for recharging? Just one of the many puzzling things I saw. The faster the rest of the world catches up with quiet vehicles the better, as far as I’m concerned.

Xi'an is one of the oldest cities in China and it’s right in the middle. As every description of the place says, it is the Eastern gateway of the Silk Road. So it has always been an international hub, welcoming traders and diplomats from afar, and now welcoming tourists with equanimity, if not exactly warmth. The wealth that grew from trade, especially trade in silk (and no doubt, weapons) for horses, was such that successive Emperors (73 of them!) have reigned from here. As a wealthy centre from which power has radiated out in all directions it has been hotly contested. Ironic, no, that the old name for the city is Changán, meaning Perpetual Peace.

Hence the reason the old part of the city is surrounded by 14 km of walls dotted with watchtowers and defended with massive double-jeopardy style gates and surrounded by a wide moat. I did the standard tourist thing and rented a bike to judder my way around the whole wide wall on the cobblestones. It was surprisingly peaceful. This was one of the only times that I saw other gui lo (red devils) in Xian.

East Gate 

The replica watchtowers along the wall now house spotlessly clean toilets

Just for reference, this is NOT where I was staying, but it was the foyer. The Xian Boutique Aparthotel is on the 20th floor of a very large block of apartments with a shopping centre on the lower floors. There's quite a bit of night-life in the area around. My hotel is run by Any who has over 20 years experience as a guide in Xian and speaks perfect English. He has lots of helpful advice to suit every budget and his partner Steve, who is English, was also extremely helpful. Recommended!

The city has a couple of other highly-visible historical symbols, like the beautifully-lit pagoda I could see from my 20^th floor hotel room but overwhelmingly, Xian has a thoroughly modern pulse. With a population of somewhere upwards of 12 million it is a vast, exciting, noisy city, growing rapidly if the number of cranes is anything to go by. It makes sense that in a place that has so well fortified in the past, military industries would be important, and modern Xi'an is now a centre for aerospace and military technologies, as well as education and research. There are 56 universities. Artificial Intelligence, nanotechnologies and robotics are among the growth industries. It is probably one of the safest places in the world to be a tourist.

Construction and tourism. Millions of tourists - in 2016, 150 million of them, with 80% being domestic visitors. The discovery of the terracotta warriors in 1974 set off a tide of rubberneckers. Xi'an is also the place where the lunar new year was first celebrated, so it is a special place for Chinese visitors during the holiday period. The local authorities clearly are doing their best to capitalise on that reputation, with huge installations to celebrate the Year of the Pig in many of the public spaces.

Around the city, every park and open space seemed to be undergoing renovation and renewal, including adding musical fountains, light installations, themed pavilions, green walls, seasonal plant beds and more. I went to Lian Hu Park in the middle of the old city which was supposed to be a local oasis where you can enjoy lots of spring blossoms and peaceful lotus ponds. I negotiated my way around an almost-completed huge indoor roller-skating rink to find that most of the park was a building site and the ‘lake’ completely drained. Yet in the bits that could be walked, it was all happening. Ballroom dancing. Individuals doing tai chi. Old men with birds in cages. A cluster doing some sort of folk dancing or salsa maybe, some dressed in costume – Slavic? Flamenco? Middle Eastern? Hard to tell with the scratchy amplification and opposing tinny notes from a wee orchestra of old men sawing at mysterious instruments and a woman with a microphone screeching out some extraordinary Chinese opera song that to my ear sounded unnaturally discordant. That lot were drawing a good crowd of old folk though. And just beside them, a younger group being loudly directed in Step or some other sort of synchronised exercising to bouncy music. In between, kiddies on wee bikes running amok in the early spring haze that could almost be called sunshine.

Everywhere I went was amazingly clean. I’m certain there are whole armies of cleaners, sweepers and rubbish collectors employed to keep it like this. Minimal graffiti, tidy pavements, discrete rubbish bins. It seems like western cities could learn lessons here, surely a street sweeping or butt-picking job would be preferable to begging for many folk?

Butts. Smoking. It’s banned in the entire City Wall precinct but that only means that the toilets reek of sneaky puffing. In the apartment block where my hotel was there were No Smoking signs everywhere and yet the smell of smoke lingered constantly. There were ashtrays in the rooms and trays of butts at the end of the corridors. Men lighting up as they got out of the lift, before they even made out of the lobby. Men. Now I think about it, I can’t remember seeing any women smoking. It was almost a shock at the airport in Madrid to see young women lighting up.