The Wall Changed Everything: Beijing, Xi'an, and the Trip That Made Us Bold
China | Beijing + Xi'an | March 2005
China was the trip that changed everything. Not just for how extraordinary the sights were, but for what it did to us as travelers. Before China, we were adventurous in a comfortable sort of way. After China, we were bold. It's the trip that handed us a new passport identity and made every trip after it possible.
We booked a guided tour because frankly we weren't sure we could manage China on our own. In hindsight I think we could have, but the tour gave us something valuable: a framework and a guide named Flora, who went by her American name to make it easier on us.
Our Beijing guide was Michael, same story. They were warm and generous with their time and their country, and the warmth turned out to be the defining characteristic of every Chinese person we met.
We landed in Beijing late at night and I remember standing in front of a Starbucks in the airport waiting for other group members to arrive, thinking: my Starbucks really does follow me everywhere. The hotel was a genuine surprise. Luxury by Chinese standards, and the rooms were lovely. The beds, on the other hand, were like sleeping on cement. I'm not exaggerating. I plopped down that first night and was immediately jarred awake by the sheer hardness of the mattress. This was not a one-hotel issue. This was an all-of-China issue. We slept on concrete for two weeks and called it character building.
Beijing opened with its greatest hits and they delivered without fail. The Forbidden City is sprawling in a way no photograph prepares you for. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world, and you feel the weight of its history in your chest when you stand in it. Both are extraordinary. But the moment I keep coming back to when I think about Beijing is the Great Wall.
As the bus pulled up, Matt looked out the window at the Wall going straight up the mountain and said flatly: "No way. I'm not climbing up that." And look, I understood the instinct. It literally went vertical. The steps were uneven, worn down by centuries of foot traffic, and steep in a way that makes your calves burn just looking at them.
But I climbed it. I made it to the top. And when I turned around and looked out over everything below me, something shifted. I wasn't dripping sweat. I wasn't gasping. My journey toward being healthier had been real and slow and sometimes discouraging, and standing on top of the Great Wall of China was when it became undeniable. It was the proudest moment of my life up to that point. And for the first time in the history of Matt and Erin traveling together, he was the one struggling to keep up with me. Not the other way around. I won't pretend that wasn't satisfying.
Xi'an is where Matt had been mentally living since we booked this trip. The Terra Cotta Warriors were his thing, his anticipation, his personal Great Wall equivalent. And they did not disappoint him.
The backstory makes them even more astonishing. Made more than 2,000 years ago as an afterlife army, the tomb was later robbed, burned, and destroyed multiple times. Most of the warriors were found in pieces. What you're looking at now is the result of incredibly painstaking reassembly, thousands of fragments fitted back together to rebuild an army. They're beautiful and powerful to see. We were also lucky enough to be there on a day when one of the original farmers who discovered them in the 1970s was there signing books. He and his fellow discoverer received new bicycles and government jobs for their trouble. For finding one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in human history. History is sometimes deeply unfair.
Here's what I treasure most about Xi'an though, and it has nothing to do with the main attraction. When we arrived at the hotel, most of our tour group immediately wanted to rest. Matt and I looked at each other. We were in China. We did not come to China to rest.
We went for a walk. Our hotel was not in a touristy area, which meant what we found was real Xi'an. People stopped dead in their tracks to stare at us as we made our way down the street. We found out later that many of them had never seen a white person in real life before. That thought lodged itself in my brain and stayed there.
We turned down a narrow alley where people were cooking on the street and selling goods from doorway-sized shops. They were happy to pose for pictures, excited to show us what they were making. My face hurt from smiling so much. Then a group of men ahead of us, and one called out "Hello." I said hello back. Within thirty seconds there was a crowd gathering around Matt, fascinated by his camera, wanting to see it, wanting their picture taken. I had one second of panic thinking he was being mobbed before I realized they weren't hostile at all. They were delighted. These were people who wanted to be in the photographs we would take home to America. That realization moved me more than almost anything else on the whole trip.
That was our only real China experience on the tour, away from the coached and curated sites. Real people, real streets, real curiosity. Unforgettable doesn't come close.
Xi'an also has an ancient City Wall that you can walk along the top of, which is genuinely remarkable, and the Wild Goose Pagoda for good measure. But I'll be honest: that walk in the alley is the Xi'an I remember.