Cassini RADAR colleague and fellow book-writer Rosaly Lopes from JPL poses in front of Xian's Bell Tower
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In the Moslem quarter of Xian - note the headgear - among the colorful vendors of streetfood. Good kebabs! There's a large mosque too, although looked to me more like a 'regular' Taoist temple.
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No visit to Xian would be complete without seeing the Terracotta Army. Most pictures just show a column a few wide so you can see the detail on individuals, but to me the overall scale - some 8000 warriors - was the most impressive thing
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Some of the warriors are still being excavated (the site was only discovered in 1975 or so). Note the soot - roof beams above the warriors were burned some time after the site was constructed circa 210 BC.
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I then took a 2hr flight to Jiayuguan in Gansu province, NW China. From the plane I saw, hazily, the magnificent dunes, some up to 500m high, in the Badain Jaran desert. Note the regular spacing of these star dunes, and the lakes between them.
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Jiayuguan is on the Silk Road, and marked the Western edge of China. It is also the extreme western end of the Great Wall (this steep section restored for visitors : note the rammed earth construction typical of the desert parts of the wall)
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The view from the tower at the top, looking across the Hexi Corridor to the Qulian mountains was spectacular. Although I wasnt able to visit, the
Jiuquan satellite launch complex is not far from here (so think of
Jiayuguan as China's Alamogordo..)
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A section of the wall is kept in its original condition, as the First Beacon Tower here, on a cliff (being undercut) over the Beida River
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There's a neat replica military camp, with watchtowers to climb up on,
command tents, cannon, etc. - even a rope bridge across the river.
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Jiayuguan Fort is famous and impressive - the perimeter wall is some 700m
long. Here you see in the distance the smoke (I saw 3 different colors) from the iron
smelters and power stations of Jiayuguan
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The fort is impressive in size: there is also a good Great Wall Museum.
It either is never very busy, or March is not peak season. Very
pleasant, sunny with air about freezing.
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They had a couple of straw dummeies set up, so you could pretend
(1 Yuan/1 shot) to be an archer defending the fort against Mongols. Harder
than you might think (0 hits/7 shots). Maybe I wasnt correcting for the
altitude (1500m) correctly...
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