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I have travelled East to LuoYang and ZhengZhou for the long weekend.

Both cities were in Henan and ZhengZhou is the capital of Henan.

LuoYang was a historical city similar to Xi an filled with dynaties and prehistoric records.  This is also the birth place of traditional pottery glazing method唐三彩。I was truely amazed by the  brilliant idea of pottery and its glazing method created 2 thousands years ago when I visited the LuoYang museum.  Xi An’s museum displayed targeted at the royal families, Luoyang Museum focus more on the commoner and the riches too.

We went to 龙门石窟 but it was covered with thick hazed.  This made the entire trip mysterious.  Tang dynasties was so powerful to made this cave buddha possible.  What I have seen in the museum of the buddhas was amplified 20 times bigger sitting along the cliffs next to the 伊河。

What kind of a cities were Tang Dynasty culturally I wandered?

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Today is the last day of 2011 with me in Xi An.

Top 3 happening events in Xi An as per followed.  Just My view.

 1.  Opening of the No 2. MRT line –simple and effective. 

2.  2011 Xi’an horticultural Expo — Room for improvement but is still impressive.

3.  Cooling measures by the central government.– Housing price is affected but not as much compared to coastal cities area.

In addition, there were accidents related to gas explosion and falling structures that were fatal.  Other than that, Xi’an was relatively on the positive note for the year of 2011.

In my last day in Xi’an, I have bought 8 silver panda coins(one ounch) and a handmade black pottery horse of about one meter.

Hope all to have a prosperous 2012 will filled with 龙马精神。

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On the 11 hours flight to Xi’an, i read LKY latest book on singapore polices on bilingualism.  The book record his account on the formulation of Singapore bilingualism policy since British colony time to his ‘iron fist’ control of the Ministry of Education to impose this far sighted policy.

Reading this book I felt that this was not his own written word taking account that he was assisted by many editors from the press media. And his usual fighting stance was minimised and much missed.

It was interesting to note that he has deleted his christian name ‘Harry’ given by his grand father and used only Lee Kuan Yew when he was registered to practise law.   This is to reinstate that he was chinese by nature and no matter what kind of western education he received he would not became an English Gentlement which was embraced by the majority of the colonies.

Only when you inherited the wealth and value of your ‘own’ culture then you will be confident and bold in your thought and action.   In this case it was the chinese or asian value mentioned by him.

Another interesting account was his government critical and closing of some chinese institutions.  It was the political correctness at that time as singapore was situated in the sea of Muslim countries. 

I think writing this book now also reflected his political correctness considering the rise of the modern China.  And a certain emotion of his action and inaction of his dealing with the delicate Chinese language situation in the history of Singapore.  I sincerely hope that this will not be his last book.

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Hong Kong is my favorite stop over whenever I need more sunlight and a break.

I am here to spent about one week before going back to singapore with my family.

The big contrast against the weather and orderliness relax myself when I was in HK.

Xi an is dirty due to the nearby dessert.  The cars is always dusty which in turn dirty the road.  Everymorning water spraying truck roam through the major roads just to clean up a little but turned the road into a muddy tracks.  And the vehicles parked along the pedestrain walkways due to lack of planning for carparks.  This is very annoying as it lack of order in respect to the urban spaces.

The money instead spend on major parks which were build in every statlite towns to provide more green lung.  Which is good for the people but the city is in chaos due to the lake of traffic regulation.  It was almost impossible for vehicle to move over the weekend peak period.

I hope the government really do something to the road and the traffic conditions.  Many foreigners left Xi’an due to the dusty and traffic condition.

It is becoming more inward looking than before for Xi’an IMHO.

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Where I stayed nearby was a taoist temple dedicated to one of the goddess from 八仙’s 韩湘子。Thus the street 湘子庙街 was named.  However, except for few tourist,  few local visited the temple unlike temples in taiwan or SE asia which was always crowded.

I met an elder who revisited this temple for the wrong reason.  He has stayed in the temple during the 50s and it was the HQ for the city cleanning service.  He revisited the this place as he spent his youth in this city cleaning the city. There werent any goddess figures then as it was solely an office for the cleaning HQ.

I asked him whether he belived in any religion.  Like many elders I met, he mentioned it was useless turning to religions or taoist.  ‘没有用‘。

However, It seem there were revivial of religion faciltities in Xi’ an but mostly was dedicated to 财神爷/庙。 If you ever happened to see one popular one， you will be ‘extorted’ into getting blessings from the goddess. 

The muslim here seem to preserve their root better than the majority chinese.

I wander what would the peoples here turns to when they felt uncertain about the future or living?  Maybe other forms of religion such as few cathedrals I found here or the taoist monestries found in the mountain? 

If not I really pitty this cultural link of the chinese which was badly suffered during the revoluation period.

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Xi An or northen china food are oily and salty and is 重口味。

漠 or 馒头 is one of their staple food together with noodle and rice.  So far I have no luck whenever i am eatting 漠 as it seem difficult to digest for me.  I have a hard time whenever the local invited me to try this.

The local 小吃 has to be modified in order to reach the wider audience as it is  facing competitions from others cities.

As the traportation and interaction between cities getting more common, more upmarket food in Xi an is a fusion mainly with 川，湘，and the general northern food style.

It was quite different from my hometown and I has been adjusting to the local food.

However, whenever I have a craze with hometown food, I could reach out to the popular fast food chain.  Burger king opens its first outlet here this month and there were one or two taiwanese and hk fast food.  In addition, Singapore developer Mapletree has opened their oversea Vivo city in Xi An that came with a Singapore outlet selling popular singapore dishes.  There are 2 good indians restaurants and it seems more japanese restaurants are coming up.

But pizza is popular in this city and I wander the great MarcoPolo stole the receipe from Xi An and introduced it to Italy.  Just kidding.

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I managed to catch a glimpse of the International horticultural exposition Xi’an China 2011 before its closure tonight.

2011西安世园会园区总面积418公顷，其中水域面积188公顷；标志性建筑有长安塔、创意馆、自然馆和广运门；主题园艺景点分别为长安花谷、五彩终南、丝路花雨、海外大观和灞上彩虹；并设有灞上人家、椰风水岸和欧陆风情三处特色服务区；同时将设置展示来自国内外的精美艺术品、雕塑以及珍禽、珍稀动物等，将让人们充分领略园林、园艺、建筑、艺术之美.

From the offical report, this is a huge landscape to be built upon for a period of about 3 years despite 1/3 of the site is the existing lake. 

Most buildings are spectacular for its temporarily status especially the night scene when lited with lighting feacture.  The pavilion was almost unreachable due to the large crowd till the very last day.  I hope they would be conserved so that I could visit them later.

I manage to visit the natural pavilion which is quite similar to taiwan’ expo last year but was smaller and less variety of species.

The hardscape or the hardware are definitely commendable but not the ’software’.  The scale of the  expo was huge but it appeared to be a huge theme park without much attention given to the theme of horticulture. 

This could not be comparable to shanghai world expo but it was tremendouos effort by a second tier city.

And I like the Mascot which is the cute and simple little pomegranate.

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After 3 weeks in singapore. I am back to Xi’an again blogging at changi airport.

My agent informed me to cut down some 9kg to be eligible for my term insurance.

This deep rooted weight problem has surfaced and need to be addressed.  One of the main cause are social meals such as welcoming and farewell meals alongside with my teething of certain deserts.

I vowed and dertermined to shed some kg to stay healthy.  More healthy meal and cut down on heavy dreaking.

Exercise more and be less agitated over matters.

Time to go.

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As china going into mass holiday craze, I returned to singapore for a long holiday.

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Finally the much anticipated metro Line 2 is officially open today.

My colleagues and I went for a trial ride.

Interior was well executed except for some minor faulty details.

The train cabin was smaller compared to hk, sg or taiwan’s.  And was shorter too.  Not too good for comfort during peak hours. 

二号线最终确定的23个站名由北向南依次为：北客站、北苑站、运动公园站、行政中心站、凤城五路站、市图书馆站、大明宫西站、龙首原站、安远门站、北大街站、钟楼站、永宁门站、南稍门站、体育场站、小寨站、纬一街站、会展中心站、三爻站、凤栖原站、航天城站、韦曲南站、渭河车辆段和潏河停车场.

Hopefully this will level Xi An into a modern city state to be inline with the western cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing.

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