Rough Doors home food (柴門陝南家菜), Xian China

Passed by this shop because of the local clientele.  Yet, the reception wasn't too pushy.  The prices are generally not that expensive.  Got a veggie tofu chicken soup (CNY28 for 4 persons), chill noodle stick (CNY15), chill bitter gourd in orange zesty dressing (CNY18), dumpling (CNY18), sticky rice steamed with spare ribs (CNY28).  Among all these, the soup, the dumpling and the sticky rice spare ribs are very impressive.  All were made fresh to the order, esp. the dumpling.  The sticky rice is not that sticky like those we find.  So it's not that indigestive.  It's in between sticky rice and jasmine rice. The spare ribs are so good to go with the rice and it's not that fatty.  

Wyndham Grand South Xian

The hotel lobby is quite grand as in its name.  I believe it's also one of the very top hotels in Xian.  Why?  I found out some interesting outsiders who would pretend talking on the phone and then not available to scan the key card to go up to the room floor.   This happened to the same when I stayed in Ritz Carlton Beijing. So the prompt response is not to scan your room key card and just keep on waiting and waiting.  Next is to report to the hotel front office.  This time the front office is even more exaggerating alarming - 3 ladies holding a walkie-talkie to "work", after my reporting.  So this told they acted to tell those soliciting people to "stop for a while". 

Premier room, Wyndham Grand South Xian

Haven't come across this name Wydnam for a long time.  When I saw this one from my hotel searching on the web, and yet it's a very new hotel in Xian.  Though it's a bit far from the city (5-7km south of the downtown, I still chose it.  The pros is the location in a newly developed area called Qu Jiang (曲江) that everything is new and clean, the cons is that it's difficult to get a taxi.  In fact, it has become an issue in China and some other cities that the call-taxi app is a bit too much that the taxi (though it's vacant), they always run to pick up passengers on apps and so selectively chose passengers.  For sure, all taxi drivers look for passengers to go to the airport.  This happens the same in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.  So sick of this kind of app being abused to this extent.

Back to the room, it's very spacious and comfy.  In considering it's just US$130 net including breakfast, it's quite a bargain.  

Around Xian, China

My Chinese history isn't too good enough but getting to Xian is a very good retrospective lesson of something we have been told before.  There were indeed so many historical things in Chang On.  That's also the starting point of the Silk Road.  Because of that it aroused the West to come to see why there was such a big kingdom in the East.  The "Road" attracted more than visitors - invaders.  So if we take this history lesson well, we shouldn't emit too many signals to the extraterrestrial Universe.  Or the other way round, when the other civilisation knows about human being being too intrusive or being too self-conceited about their intelligence and technology, that would bring a potential end to the entire human being.  That's actually not the so-called "End of the World".  It's just an extinction of a tiny race in the whole Universe.  

Photo 3 is the figure of the renowned Monk Tang (唐三藏) and inside the Pagoda Dai Yan (on the right behind him) there is a temple holding the historical things about him.

Local food court - Yin Tai shopping mall, Xian, China

I found that the local Xian people quite polite and literal as the way they speak with less "tongue" accent.  This food court also gave me this impression.  From the time I purchased a valued card for this food court, the cleaning staff to the staff of each food stall, they all speak very in a good manner. Probably that's the hertitage of this historical and cultural city of the classic Chinese dynasty.

On the Wall, Xian, China