Weekend wander in the eternal city
A couple of days in Xi'an can be enough to take in the sights and sounds of this historic former capital - but watch out for those seductively delicious noodles.
The sun pierces the lattice of a wooden shutter to illuminate a corner of the room where a man and a woman sit writing at a desk. Behind them, in the shadows enveloping the rest of the room, sit 20 stone steles from centuries long gone.
This is one of the rooms in a building in the Stele Forest, a huge garden that has been housing stone steles since 1087. Scholars of the time had the garden built to protect the steles - historical and religious records carved onto stone pillars - from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which were ravaged by continuous wars at the end of the dynasty and beyond its fall. The garden has remained in use ever since.
