西安－－the wall

Xi'an as a city was clearly an ancient place. Nothing could have made this fact clearer than the ancient city wall, which stretched around a the parts of the city built before about 1400. On our first day in the city, we traveled to the city wall, with the plan to bike around it. As we climbed to the top, I was once again hit by the seemingly excessive architectural proclivities of the ancient Chinese: This thing could probably fit a 4 lane highway on top of it.


Besides sheer width, the wall encircled a massive area. The teachers told us that we wouldn't have time to bike around the wall during our visit, but of course a few of us ignored them and decided to try to bike the wall in our limited time (about 45 minutes). Turned out it took us a little over an hour of extremely vigorous biking to make it all the way around. Granted we did run into problems when my roommate's bike started losing parts:


but a few of us did make it all the way along the wall, running into an unexplained army of inflatable animals but afterwards making it back to a mildly-irritated group. The day was 特别闷热，so a few guys relaxed using the signature style of middle-aged, overheating Chinese men: the shirt roll. Ahh, looks comfortable.