Went to the ballet last night......

That's right, I actually went to a ballet--a Chinese ballet with imperial music and dancing and even enjoyed it.

It was a dinner theater event and I went solo but ended up sharing my table with three Dutch tourists and we had a pretty good time.

Xian is pretty fantastic--it's far more "Chinese" than Beijing in that the architecture and general "feeling" is far more Asian. It's an old feudal capitol, and once the capitol of all of China. It is literally filled with old historical structures but of course the main drawing event is the Terracotta Warriors which I will visit tomorrow.

The Wild Goose Pagoda is a working Buddhist temple--one of the few remaining in Communist China today. Strangely enough, the hotel where I'm staying here is having some kind of Buddhist "convention" and around 11:00 at night I had a monk trying to get into my room--he had the electronic key card mixed up but it kind of makes you wonder what these guys do for fun at night.

There are a lot of old buildings here and the city has a HUGE brick wall much like the Great Wall that extends over nine miles around the city. I went around it this afternoon on a golf cart and it is in many ways as amazing as the Great Wall.