Xian pollution, Generalissimos in pajamas, and J-pop

Corbett | July 27, 2008 7:18 PM

Being in Shaanxi for a few days was an eye opener. I needed to do some work which you can read about on my property blog at Jade Dragon Development.

Here's a quick panorama showing the pollution in Xian. I tried to do an hour in the hotel gym looking out on this vista, but was gasping after 3km.

Here's a few seconds of the power of Chinese tourism...

And these guys were trying their best at a funky basement rock club called "The Moonkey" near the South gate. A good mix of rockers rolled in later, but we had to leave.

The next day, on the out way to the must see terracotta warriors, I insisted we stop by Li Shan and go to Hua Qing Chi, the famous hot springs where ancient emperors hot tubbed with their conks, and also the place where Chiang Kai Shek was arrested by his allied warlords Zhang Xue Liang and Yang Hu Cheng in an important historical event involving Mao, Stalin, the Australians, Madame Soong, and a whole cast of characters, called the Xian Incident. Zhang and Yang had boldly arrested CKS in an attempt to convince him to unite with Mao and fight the Japanese together. That didn't work out of course, and Zhang was put in confinement for the rest of his life while Yang got a bullet to the head before the CPC took over. I think CKS must've been pretty peeved by the whole affair, as they found him barefoot, hiding in his pajamas in a cave up on Li Shan. No Generalissimo would be caught dead in his PJs!

So with all the current cross straits news happening lately, and the opening up between China and Taiwan, I felt it was important to revisit history, and see the last time the KMT and CPC almost agreed to get along. The coolest part of the site was seeing the bullet holes in the shattered glass and walls of CKS's quarters.

On the way out to the airport, I was thinking about all this, and how fast Xian was changing, when a Japanese pop song came on the radio. I found this remarkable since I can remember in Taiwan when Japanese music was banned from the airwaves until the mid-90's. To hear a Japanese pop song now in a taxi in Xian, near the site where both the KMT and CPC were trying to collaborate to fight against the Japanese, was just plain weird. But no one seemed to think so but me.

Category: Mr. Asia

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