XI’AN ("SHEE-ANN")
In Xanadu the Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea,
So twice five miles of fertile ground,br>
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)
Xi’an—the name itself harkens those poetic lines. The majesties and mysteries and miseries of this ancient place were my reason to visit China. Coleridge’s dream poem reminds me of the Emporer Qin Shi Huang and his 2,200-year-old legacy here, although the greatest of Qin’s works was not even discovered until 1974, a century and a half after the poet’s death. And Kubla Khan rings like "Kublai Khan," the Mongol Emperor who hosted the Polos from his capital in present Beijing. Never mind--I still think of Qin and the grand works which that mighty Emperor constructed both above and below ground level around Xanadu--Xi’an. The vertebra selected by Emperor Qin Shi Huang were solid and remain the backbone of modern China two thousand years later. In fact, the English word "China" comes from his Qin Dynasty (pronounced "chin").
See Xi’an by night. It presents a festival of colour. We were driven from the huge new airport after dark and passed the immense sculpture above. Its graceful, flowing form was fully lit. Freeway overpasses, lit with strings of blue lights, mimicked the sweep of that wonderful sculpture. During our visit I was to learn something of the dancing that associates this lovely form with Xi’an . The city itself was ablaze as well. Even the boulevard shrubbery was backlit with green lights. The notched parapets of the old city wall were strung with blue lighting and the youth hostel at is base, like other city-central buildings, was a riot of reds and golds.
Xi’an is a walled city. First built during the Tang Dynasty when Xi’an was the capital of all China, the present walls were constructed during the Ming Dynasty. Most Chinese cities remained walled until the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s when those walls were torn down to make room for urban expansion. In Xi'an the city wall survived this national destruction. It is now the only complete wall in China with turrets, battlements and a moat. It is thirteen metres high and thirteen metres (or five chariots) wide and encircles the city for fourteen kilometres. Its bricks are mortared with sticky rice. I wanted to rent a bicycle and ride the perimetre atop that wall, but had only a frustrating twenty minutes to pedal to the first tower and back. I am determined to go back to this place for the grand circle with enough time to study in passing the information embedded in each huge footprint atop that wall. Those footprints appear to march into the mists of time, to the beginnings of China—like Xi’an itself.
Although Xi'an has more green spaces with even main thoroughfares lined with trees, massive apartment blocks dominate the skyline as in Beijing. There are no elevators in most of these Xi’an high-rises because residents get a discount based upon the number of stairs they must climb. The view suites are the cheapest!
This colourful modern city of Xi’an perches upon layers of ancient ones. People first settled in this rich Yellow River flood plain about 6,000 years ago. In 1027 BC the Zhou dynasty kings established their capital near the present city. In 247 BC when Qin Shi Huang, the founding Emperor of China took the thrown at the age of thirteen, he decided to move his court a few miles to the Wei River Tributory. The Qin fell to the Han Dynasty in 206 BC, and the Han capital was also established a few miles north of modern Xi'an. The city declined for the next five centuries from about 35 AD, but in 583 AD the Sui Dynasty established another capital in the vicinity. However, the present city of Xi’an achieved its zenith as the most important in Asia under the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) when the city wall was first built. Today Xi’an and its environs comprise a bustling urban area with forty-three universities and 7,000,000 souls.