Wednesday was the much-awaited day of (relative) freedom in Shanghai, without any planned activities after lunch. But the day began early with a 7:30 breakfast with Shanghai-based Yale alums, at which a professor and two students discussed their experience on the trip so far. History of art professor Sandy Isenstadt mused on the connections that »

The agenda was a visit to a village outside Xi’an, and the question of the day seemed to be: Would this village show us the true quality of life in rural China? From the beginning of the trip, it has been obvious that the trip is taking place under the auspices of the Chinese government. »

So you’ll have to forgive me if I gush a bit in this post — our main activity today was a visit to the Terracotta Soldiers, which I’ve wanted to ever since I first read about them in about the fifth grade. An estimated 8,000 clay horses and warriors — each of which has a »

If we were ever going to have a chance to see what “real life” might be like in Xi’an, it seemed that Sunday was our best shot. During our time in Beijing, we were confined mainly to the highly developed, highly touristed downtown area, or else the bus as it drove from destination to destination »

We spent most of Saturday in transit, first from our Beijing hotel to the Great Wall at Badaling, then to the Beijing Olympics construction, and finally to the airport and our flight to Xi’an. On the way to the Great Wall, we stopped at a museum honoring Zhan Tianyou, a class of 1881 Yale graduate »