Small Goose Pagoda

We spent the day in Xi'an, first with a visit to the Shaanxi museum. Not as good as the Shanghai museum and a bit dark but very interesting. There were a lot of very interesting relics that told the history of Xi'an. Xi'an is the beginning of the famous 'Silk road', the most well-known trading route of ancient Chinese civilisation. Trade in silk grew under the Han Dynasty ( 202 BC - AD 220). After an hour or so there we went to a session on Chinese painting where I admit I bought a couple, hope I still like them when I get home! One is of horses - symbol of success in Chinese culture and the other of the 'ghost catcher'. Very different so I hope I can find places to hang them.

A bunch of us climbed the small Flying Goose Pagoda, there are two pagodas, one big and one small. Our local guide, Jimmy told us a legend as to why they are called flying goose pagodas. According to ancient stories of Buddhists, there were two branches of Buddhism, one ate meat and for the other it was taboo. One day, they couldn't find meat to buy. Upon seeing a group of big wild geese flying by, a monk said to himself: 'Today we have no meat. I hope the merciful Bodhisattva will give us some.' The leading wild goose broke its wings and fell to the ground. All the monks were startled and believed that Bodhisattva showed his spirit to order them to be more pious. They established a pagoda where the wild goose fell and stopped eating meat.

For dinner we had a meal of dumplings, there were about 18 different varieties and they are a speciality of the region. The varieties included duck, pork, fish, vegetable and even walnut and each dumpling had a different shape. The fish shape was so clever but included the duck here. Quite a feat and a feast!

After dinner we went to the Tang Dynasty Show. Loved every minute of it. The sets were fantastic, the music, singing and dancing were something I had never seen before. There was even humour, I have a lot of photos here and don't know which one I want to put up but have to choose one. Sorry about the heads in the foreground.