Early this morning and I do mean early (4:30 a.m.), we left to take a two hour flight from Beijing to Xian. Xian is an ancient city where the Terra Cotta Warriors were discovered. We plan to see them tomorrow.
I had a bit of a scare though. Out of our small group I got bumped from the plane. Chuck and I waited while our guide, who was traveling with us, worked out the problem. We almost missed the flight, though–all three of us. Can you imagine me speaking no Chinese left behind in Beijing by myself to catch the next flight?  It makes me shudder thinking about it.  Chuck kept saying, “I’m not getting on that flight without you.”  My knight in shining armor!
We find ourselves with a huge language barrier over here. Our guide Ping speaks perfect English, but we thought that most of the young people spoke English. We were wrong. They speak some, but not enough to communicate well.
For example the other night I wanted some cream for my coffee. They were so eager to please and so nice that they kept bringing me different beverages. I finally just acted like what they gave me was perfect. I never got my cream. 
We had lunch today at a restaurant that specializes in dumplings–Chinese dumplings. They were stuffed with every imaginable meat and vegetable. It was very good.  Some were cooked in a hot pot at our table.

Afterwords, we visited the gardens of a Buddhist temple. This is the Small Wild Goose Pagoda built in 652. 

Later we spent some time in a museum, the Shanxi Provincial History Museum, to give us a good review of what we will tour tomorrow. Most of the artifacts in this museum were unearthed in Shanxi. 

Shaanxi was the ancient imperial capital of China, having been the seat of more than 13 feudal dynasties, including the Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang dynasties. Xian is in the Shanxi Province.