Xian Travelogue

choi

Perri Klass, Feasts for the Eyes, and the Palate; There is more to see than the city's renowned terra-cotta warriors--and plenty to eat. New York Times, Feb 9, 2014 (in the Travel session of Sunday newspaper).
www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/trave ... -in-xian-china.html

Note:
(a) For about a month, cn.nytimes.com has not translated this travelogue.
(b) Perri Klass
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perri_Klass
(born in Trinidad; BA in biology from Harvard College in 1979; earned MD from Harvard Medical School in 1986;  is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University)
(c) “On the ‘Muslim Street 回民街/回坊(小吃一条街)’ in the Chinese city of Xian stands a bronze tableau in honor of street food. There, on a crowded lane packed with stalls selling Islamic-Chinese cuisine — [soupy] lamb dumplings 汤包子/灌汤包, mutton soup, pancakes and mung bean noodles [绿豆]凉粉 — tourists can pose with statues of a soup seller and his customers. * * * Xian [is] one of the four ancient capitals of China. [Besides sightseeing, one can] be served the characteristic ‘dumpling feast’ 饺子宴 [introduced in 1984 by 西安解放路的饺子宴餐厅: ‘提供有108个不同种类的中国饺子’]: a high-end celebration of local dumpling culture that can include dozens of morsels, savory and sweet; fried, steamed and boiled; some shaped like leaves, others like flowers and frogs.”

(d) “Sights [in Xian] range from two splendid imperial tombs to the syncretic architecture of Chinese Islam at its finest, to an elegant Buddhist pagoda, all in the modern Chinese urban context of a city of about eight million people * * * One cold winter evening, my husband, our teenage son and I took the overnight ‘soft sleeper’ train from Beijing to Xian. Our aim was a trip that would build on the warriors — and the dumplings — and let us explore the past and present of the city. The tiny train compartment was cozy, with comforters and pillows, and grassy cups of hot tea brought to us in the morning, shortly before the train pulled into the Xian station right up against the largely intact 14th-century city walls. We stayed at a residence hotel with small self-contained apartments in the historic center, near the Muslim quarter [回民街 also], and close to two famous 14th-century towers, the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, both of which were completely covered in scaffolding. We quickly discovered that though we were just a short walk away from the famous delicacies of the Muslim Street (its formal name is Beiyuanmen Street), we were even closer to the rich possibilities of another small food street 北院门夜市 across from the hotel, which we quickly came to regard as our own. This street, completely lacking in historic character — or statues — had street vendors with steamers full of dumplings stuffed with glutinous rice, a man who hacked huge grilled scallion-flecked flatbreads 葱香 锅盔 into squares, and barbecuers with small grills on which marinated shredded pork and chicken sizzled. On the Muslim Street, we sampled Islamic Chinese food, which completely eschews pork and relies instead on lamb and mutton, as well as glutinous noodles made from mung bean flour. Women made scallion-filled pancakes to order on griddles (you could also get your pancake filled with yellow chives or with spiced ground meat). We stepped into a storefront to eat our first bowls of paomo 羊肉泡馍, perhaps the most characteristic Xian dish of all: flatbread crumbled into a rich mutton soup. Xian, the eastern end of the old Silk Road, has long been important for Muslims and Buddhists, emperors and traders. The Great Mosque of Xian 西安大清真寺 was founded in 742 [唐玄宗李隆基 685-762; reign 712-756], not so long after Islam took root in China. The mosque, rebuilt over the centuries, is notable for its Chinese architecture — a minaret that strongly resembles a pagoda, and pavilions decorated in bright ornamental ceramics.”
(i) syncretism (n; New Latin syncretismus, from Greek synkrētismos federation of Cretan cities, from syn- + Krēt-, Krēs Cretan; First Known Use 1618):
“the combination of different forms of belief or practice”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syncretism
(ii) If one googles “grassy cup,” one can find it refers to (green) color of the cup or content (eg, a brewed sencha 煎茶, a Japanese green tea), or the motif (leaves, grass) of the cup.  
(iii) “Beiyuanmen Street”: actually “北院门;” NOT followed by “街.”

(e) “Right off the Muslim Street lies the palace complex of a Ming dynasty nobleman, GAO Yue Song 高 岳嵩, who rose to greatness 400 years ago by placing second in the Confucian imperial examination; a wall plaque at the house celebrates his brilliance as a 12-year-old test taker. We wandered through the tranquil, rambling house, presented as a ‘scholar’s residence,’ with its succession of rooms and courtyards.”

高家大院 (始建于明崇祯十四年（1641）, when 高岳崧12岁参加科举考试; “‘榜眼及第’这块牌匾为乾隆御批”)

The next day, it was time for Xian’s main attraction: the terra-cotta warriors. An hourlong bus ride took us into the countryside, past universities and spas; the area is famous for its natural beauty and healing springs. The Museum of Qin Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses is laid out as a series of huge buildings, reminiscent of airplane hangars, that extend over the three main trenches where the warriors were excavated after they were discovered in 1974. Pit 1 features thousands of the life-size clay warriors lined up in rows, while Pit 2 has a smaller group, including chariots and horses. In the Pit 3 building, you can get close to individual warriors in glass cases. The museum is, without question, a strange and wonderful place to visit, whether you prefer to reflect upon the vanity of emperors, the skill of the terra-cotta manufacturers — who managed to give the soldiers distinctive personalities — or upon the lives and longings of the peons who fought the imperial wars.
The next day, we had breakfast in the nameless food alley across from our hotel, where one particularly enterprising vendor with a grill built on to a bicycle cart made grilled chicken sandwiches topped with a fried egg and served on buns of puffy white Chinese bread slathered with two kinds of spicy bean sauce.

(f) “Later, we took a taxi to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda 大雁塔 [位于西安市大慈恩寺内], a Buddhist temple dating to AD 652. The pagoda is surrounded by pavilions with stone carvings, many of them celebrating the journeys of the scholar Xuanzang 玄奘, a seventh-century Buddhist monk who traveled all over China and then on to India, in search of wisdom and sacred Buddhist texts, which the pagoda was originally built to house. We climbed the interior stairs, up the seven levels, and looked out over the modern city of Xian. On our last day, we visited the Hanyangling tombs 汉阳陵, another lavish imperial burial site, this one from the Han dynasty emperor Liu Qi, who reigned from 156 to 141 BC, and his Empress Wang. This emperor was again buried with terra-cotta figurines — but they were very different, both in scale and in scope, from the infantry, archers, officers and charioteers who make up the more famous terra-cotta army. For one thing, the figures at the Hanyangling tombs are doll-size, and include serried ranks of miniature sheep and goats and cows and pigs, presumably sent into the afterlife as a food source. In the enormous underground museum, you peer into the dim tomb compartments at groups of human figures or alternatively, at underground herds of livestock.
The emperor’s insistence on eating well underground (he was buried with figurines representing cooks and servants as well as all that meat on the hoof) is well reflected in the food offerings of Xian. We had dinner one night at Tong Sheng 同盛, a restaurant devoted to a higher-end version of paomo, and another night at the Xian Hotel, in a vast dining room of somewhat tattered elegance. But the most interesting food is bought — and eaten — outside. Skewers of highly spiced lamb; cold, sour liang ping noodles [should be ‘liang pi noodles’ 米面凉皮]; ground meat sandwiches, sweet potato fritters; hand-pulled Xian noodles with chile sauce and cilantro; steamed sticky rice on skewers with sweet sauce and peanuts, mutton soup dumplings.”
(i) “汉阳陵是西汉汉景帝刘启及其皇后王氏同茔异穴的合葬陵园，位于今陕西省咸阳市渭城区”  zh.wikipedia.org
(ii) Xi'an Hotel  西安宾馆
www.xahotel.com