In Part One, I mentioned the subway system under construction in modern Xi’an. That was in September 2008.
For an update, Travel China Guide.com says, “The Xi’an subway system is scheduled to have 6 lines, with a total length of 251.8 kilometers… While the first phase of subway Line 2 has been in use since Sep 16, 2011, the other five lines are designed to be finished in 2018 in sequence.”
When the second phase is completed, the full length of Line 2 will be 26.64 kilometers (about 16.5 miles).
The population of Xi’an has also increased since Neville Gishford hosted The Discovery Channel’s documentary of China’s Most Honourable City. Today, there are more than 8 million people living there.
Gishford’s documentary started with Archaeologist Charles Higham (born 1939), a world famous authority on ancient Asian cities. Higham is a British archaeologist most noted for his work in Southeast Asia. Among his noted contributions to archaeology are his work (including several documentaries) about the Angkor civilization in Cambodia, and his current work in Northeast Thailand. He is a Research Professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Higham said, “A delegation of jugglers from Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD, who is regarded as one of the greatest emperors in Roman history) traveled and performed in the Han Court of Chang’an.”
More than two thousand years ago, the walls of Chang’an were made of rammed (compressed) earth and much of the city from kiln fired clay bricks, which was a revolutionary building material at the time that changed the history of architecture.
The builders of Han Chang’an used this new technology in revolutionary ways. For instance, building an underground sewer system connected to the moat that surrounded the city.
Continued on January 28, 2016 in Part 3 or Start with Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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