Tourism, continued

Every week I see a few more of the monuments that make up Xi'an's rich 7000 year history (a fact which any good citizen will be quick to tell you).

Xi'an is the starting point of the Silk Road, the route that allowed for one of the first multi-national trade agreements. The picture below is a monument commemorating this passage to the West.
The Silk Road allowed for the entrance of new ideas, as well as goods, into China. In 652 A.D. a man named Xuan Zang returned from India where he had spent 18 years studying Buddhism, bring Buddhist texts to translate into Chinese. The crown prince built the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in honor of his return. Xuan Zang's journey is also the basis of a classic folk tale called Journey to the West.

Hooray for Wikipedia.