The fountain was a welcoming site due to the haziness of Xian. Xian is much more hazy than Beijing.
The building at the background is the Drum Tower. I will cover our visit to the Drum Tower later. We were not able to visit the B ell Tower because it’s closed for renovation.
Statues of street vendors found near the entrance to the Muslim Quarter.
Islam was brought to China during the Tang dynasty by Arab traders. The capital of Tang dynasty was Changán or presently known as Xian.
The street was very busy. Shops and restaurants lined the street.
Lots of variety of red dates (jujube), big and small.
Street vendors selling food.
My favourite snack here, freshly made peanut candy.
Walnut roaster.
You can buy raw walnuts or roasted walnut.
We bought some roasted one to try but they are not easy to crack. Even we managed to crack them, the walnut broke to small pieces.
Another favourite snack of spicy peanuts and chili, just like the Wong Fei Hong peanuts and chili that is available in T&T and other Chinese groceries in Richmond.
There’s a trick in cracking walnuts by hand. Take two walnuts and press them together inside your closed palm. It works!
For sanitary reason I usually don’t buy food from street vendor, I just look at it , may be take a picture but I am always so worry that it will make me sick. They may use sub-standard oil or meat to make the profit margin. Even the water bottle, I usually take it from my hotel room only. They told me some vendor will Recycle the bottles and refill it with tap water.
Oh, how did I miss the nuts with chili? They look tasty. 🙂
We ate a number of street snacks in Xian, but we gave the fresh dates a miss. They looked quite appealing, and we are pretty fast and loose with street food in a lot of places… but we had the opportunity to watch how the vendors “cleaned” them and decided to skip them in favour of cooked foods.