Xi'an

I had a great weekend trip to Xi’an with two GSB friends, Ian and Shu, and an HBS guy Winston. It was a great group to travel with and we had a blast. Ian also had 3 friends of friends in Xi’an who took us out to eat on Saturday night and showed us around. They took us out to eat at a great local place, showed us the “best bar in Xian” (which was quite cool actually), taught us a high-speed variant of paper-rock-scissors that all the people were playing at the bar (which I will be exporting back to the US), and pretty much looked out for us, even though none of us had ever met them. Amazing hospitality.

As I have done a lot of research on Tier 2 cities in China (McKinsey rates Xi’an is a Tier 2a city, meaning one of top 15 local market opportunities in China), I was very curious about what Xi’an would be like. I have heard a lot of stories about problems in Tier 2 cities – pollution, overcrowding from rural immigrants, lack of water, severe economic disparity. But Xi’an was much better than I expected.

Xi’an is an ancient capital of China – until the capital was moved to Beijing in the ~1200s, it was the capital for most of the previous 1500 years. Amazingly, there were still a number of interesting cultural relics – the downtown CBD is surrounded by the old city walls with their huge gates rising up overlooking the city. Lots of palaces, gardens, and pagodas. Some of them were really cool. Occasionally, we trudged up hundreds of steps to get to look out over a hot, smoggy nothingness. But generally, the city sights were great.

Xi’an is also fairly west geographically in China, so it has a large Muslim population. We hung out in the Muslim quarter, and had really good lamb dumplings, kebabs, rice porridge and some other stuff for dinner.

The city also had a much bigger and more vibrant upper middle class than I expected. The main street in town had tons of high-end western brand stores – Gucci, Nike, others – and tons of people were out shopping at the local malls, eating out, and going to bars throughout the weekend. Tons of people at the bar we were at had tables with US$50 bottles of scotch and green tea.

The terracotta warriors were pretty incredible. I could write a lot about them, but I will be brief as there are many internet postings about them. Built by the last emperor of the Qin Dynasty around 300 BC, the warriors are thousands and thousands of terracotta stone warriors, horses, sculptures, and animals buried in dozens of huge pits around the Qin emperor’s tomb to protect him in the afterlife. Each was painted in bright colors (though they have faded now), and every warrior had a unique face, body, etc designed to look exactly like one of the warriors in the actual army. After the emperor died, his son executed all of the thousands of workers who worked on the tomb and buried them inside so nobody would learn the secrets of entering the tomb. As archaeologists fear booby traps will collapse the sites, only a few pits have been opened today.

But the highlight of the terracotta warriors was without a doubt the “Number 1 Umbrella in China”. This bronze umbrella stand was built 2,300 years ago for the emperor. It sat in a base that could rotate, so you could easily spin the umbrella around on its axis depending on the direction of the sun. But, not just that, you could also divide it into two pieces. One half of it because a spear and the other half because a shield (somehow). An amazing and hilarious artifact showing that the fascination with umbrellas is thousands of years old.

In addition to Number 1 Umbrella in China, we also found “Number 1 Fountain in the World”. In downtown Xi’an there is a huge fountain with thousands of spouts. At 2pm Sunday there was a full musical show like you might find at the Bellagio or Disney World. We watched the pretty cool show at Number 1 Fountain* from the top of the Big Goose Pagoda.

Finally, just a few of Xi’an’s memorable signs.


*Unfortunately, the internet does not seem to support Xi’an’s claim of having Number 1 Fountain in the World. In a very quick Google search, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Michigan, and Arizona all seem to claim fountain titles of some kind.