Review of Air China flight Beijing → Xi'an in Economy

This is the outbound flight of the only flight on an Airbus A300-600 about which I had enough pictures for posting a Flight Report, posted here, despite being flow before Flight Report was launched. I also had enough to post this, because of a minor event which occurred in PEK.

Let’s call Xiangxiang my Chinese colleague who was flying with me that evening. This was a 2-days, 3-nights business trip, and she was as usual traveling light : apart from the laptop bag, you see here all of her belongings in the hotel lobby.



And yet, this tiny soft bag was what stopped her at the security check of the airport. Although she was traveling with it, this time her deodorant spray was not accepted. The problem was not with the 150 ml capacity, beyond the infamous 100 ml fluid/gel limit, but the orange “flammable product” logo (the flash made it yellow).



I don’t know if you ever tried to set fire with a deodorant, without the help of a lighter, or increase an on-going fire on board with it, but the staff at this security check that day in PEK thought it could be possible. It was OK in checked luggage, though, and Xiangxiang returned to the check in counters. We had taken considerable margins to get to the airport, in order to avoid the evening rush hour, and there was therefore no rush.

This spray was carefully protected by bubble wrap, and then placed in a small carton by the check in counter staff, and by pure chance, I saw it being loaded in the plane just under my window.



The incoming had deplaned with a jet bridge, but we were bussed to it, because it had evidently operated an international flight and was not parked alongside the domestic section of Terminal 3.



Loading Xiangxiang’ s potentially dangerous luggage was not the cause of the plane’s delay : PEK air traffic control was.

It was the rush hour on Beijing’s expressways, and also on PEK’s runways, and the A321 reached Runway 18L one hour late, and it was already pitch dark. (PEK’s ILS system being limited to CAT II does not help the punctuality of the flights in a smog prone location)



The flight was scheduled for two hours, for slightly less than 1,000 km, which provided an ample margin and the plane recovered half an hour en route off her initial delay.

There was enough time for the dinner though. I had not noted the menu, but I won’t take much of a chance in guessing that this was chicken-rice, and that the other option was beef-noodles.



I did not even have a chance to tease Xiangxiang about the delay caused by her dangerous luggage in XIY, because although there was not much walking involved room, the carton appeared at the very time we arrived in the luggage delivery room.
The planes are seldom on time in China, but luggage delivery is usually extremely efficient, and a fair comparison with other countries should include that.



Once in the taxi, the contents was found intact.



The remote location of the business venue in Xi’an and our work schedule precluded any tourist activity; I propose a tourist bonus on seldom visited site that I saw another time I went there.

The most common itinerary of first time visitors in Mainland China is Beijing – Xi’an – Shanghai – Hong-Kong, the second stop being justified by the world famous terracotta army buried in the Mausoleum of Emperor Qin.



Few visitors know about Emperor Jingdi’s Mausoleum, which also had a terracotta army of a sort. Getting there required determination: the tourist office in Xi’an gave me erroneous bus information (they did not even know that the correct bus to the place ran only twice a day), the Chinese name (HanYangLing 汉阳陵) is unrelated to the one used by Westerners and easy to confuse with that of other sites, and there was yet another name on the sign at the expressway exit.



Once you went past all these hurdles you get have a fascinating treasure trove for yourself. This model shows that this was a huge burial ground, much larger than the burial mound itself.



The original gate which was unearthed is protected by a concrete superstructure (the model above helps the visitor understand the whole layout.



The only visitors apart from me were cute athenes perched here and there.



The real treat is in this trenches (lower right in the model)



Emperor Qing of terracotta army fame was both a formidable warrior and administrator, unifying China like Emperor Napoleon would have unified Europe if he had not disastrously tried to conquer Russia.

A few generations later, Emperor Jingdi (188 BC – 144 BC) was a benevolent and peaceful sovereign, who lowered the taxes, avoided wars, lightened the penal code and adopted an economically liberal policy. To reduce government spending, he recommended reduced sized terracotta figures rather than full size ones bearing real bronze weapons, which had the unplanned consequence of protecting his mausoleum for eternity : Emperor’s Qin’s mausoleum was quickly looted and vandalized to recover the expensive bronze items, whereas that of Emperor Jingdi was nearly intact when it was investigated by modern archaeologists, like in this trench left partly dug for didactic purposes.



This peace-loving emperor was not accompanied in the netherworld by an army, but by servants and peasants In due consideration of his rank, there were thousands of them, neatly aligned in dozens of parallel trenches.



In line with his peaceful rule of a largely agricultural country, there were also all the farming impediments.



And thousands of cattle replica (the lighting was minimal – I wish I had taken a tripod with me)



The figures are 60 cm high. They had articulated wooden arms and clothing which did not survive (apart from tiny debris requiring forensic expertise for identification). Their undeveloped genitals indicate that the male figures probably represent eunuchs.



HanYangLing is typically not on the agenda of a first visit to Xi’an, and few visitors bother to return to Xi’an “because they are not going to see the terracotta army again”. I have a different view and might well come back once more to Xi’an and visit HanYangLing again.

Thanks for reading me !