First stop is Big Goose Tower, where Tang monk went to India to get copies of the original sutra（取经） and conduct translation work. Many readers will find this story some what familiar. It is the story of "Journey to the West"(西游记）! The Tang monk is, of course, Tang San Zang（唐三藏）. No, he is not a fictional character!Big Goose Tower is also know historically where after winning scholastic exams(考状元）, part of the celebration of the winners was to go atop Big Goose Tower and walk along Qu Jiang（游曲江）. Qu Jiang is now mostly covered up, but Big Goose Tower is still standing and one can even walk up its stairs to the top.
For me, there is an additional draw. Famous Tang calligrapher Chu Sui Liang（褚遂良）, wrote one of his most famous work, the "Goose Tower Sutra Preface"（雁塔圣教序）, which is being display at the foot of the Big Goose Tower.
From Big Goose Tower, we went to ShaanXi History Museum. We find the museum display technique a little old fashion, but it does have a lot of interesting artifacts. From Shang dynasty all the way to Tang dynasty, the collection is vast. I enjoy seeing things like tiger symbol(虎符). In ancient time, this is used as an authentication tool to verify the orders for the military, which may be stationed far away from the court, are indeed from the Emporer himself. I have only read about these artifacts in books and seeing it for the first time is quite exciting!Unfortunately, the museum did not do a good job selling itself. While the collection is vast, they did not highlight their most valuable collection and we find the overall experience only average.
After touring ShaanXi History Museum, we went looking for a restaurant for lunch, but found most places occupied by wedding parties. Turns out Sunday was a great day for wedding base on Chinese horoscope! Also, the tradition was to have wedding celebration start before noon, so wedding lunches are especially popular.
We tried and few places and finally managed to snatch a table at Da Qing Hua（大清花）.
Da Qing Hua serves Manchurian cuisine, which is not the local cuisine for Xi'an area. However, I enjoy the food enough to talk about it. My favorite dish is sauced bone(酱大骨). Pieces of boned in pork legs are being served. The meat has been cooked in a brasing liquid, which make the thin layer of meat covering the bone "fall off the bone" tender . Disposable gloves were given to each diner to pick up the bones and eat using one's hands. The kicker is a straw used to suck the bone marrow and broth from the within bone. Delicious! Now I know why bone marrow is such a hit among chef's circle.After lunch, we drop by Xi'an museum. Open just this year, the museum is brand new. We like the atmosphere of the museum. The floor of the main podium is a map display of Xi'an city size in different dynasty. In the ground floor is a large scale model of Chang An city in its Tang dynasty form. Both are quite impressive! The collection is smaller than those of ShaanXi History Museum, but the display made the best use of their collection to give the maximum impact. For example, there was a row of 10 Tang dynasty statues. While individually they may not be the most refine Tang statue, putting them side by side gives visitors a bigger emotional impact than having a beautiful Tang statue standing among random objects.
From Xi'an museum, we went by to Shu Yuan Men(书院门）, since I wanted to buy some calligraphy supplies. I got myself 2 calligraphy brush and also bought a "Fairness cup"(公道杯). This is a rather interesting cup. If wine is fill half way in the cup, it would not leak. However, if the cup is filled to the brim, all the liquid in the cup would leak out of a hole at the bottom of the cup! As engineers, we are debating the mechanism of how the cup works and got intrigue enough to get a souvenir:(Dinner was at Dong Lai Shun(东来顺），a Beijing chain specializing in Beijing style steamboat. We had it on our previous trip to Beijing, so it was nothing special, but this is the point where we join our tour group for the rest of our Silk Route trip.
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