To arrive in Xi’an, China, is to enter a city where history does not simply sit behind glass. It stands on ramparts, rises from excavated earth, scents the air with cumin and fresh bread, glows in lantern light and, at night, returns in costume, music and spectacle for a generation that records wonder through phone screens.
Once known as Chang’an, meaning “Eternal Peace,” Xi’an is one of China’s great ancient capitals and the eastern starting point of the Silk Road. For centuries, it stood at the center of empire, trade, faith and ideas, serving as capital to several dynasties, including the Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang.
It has often been said that if China were a tree, Beijing would be its crown, Shanghai its fruit and Xi’an its deep, ancient roots. The comparison feels especially fitting in a city where the foundations of civilization are not treated as relics of a distant past, but as part of everyday life.
On May 11 to 15, 2026, The Manila Times team, composed of CEO Anna Marie Ang Thompson, President and COO Blanca Mercado, Executive Editor Arnold Belleza, Managing Editor Lynette Luna, Lifestyle, Entertainment and The Sunday Times Magazine Editor Tessa Mauricio-Arriola, VP for Sales and Marketing Roda Zabat, Senior Account Manager Evelyn Mercado, and this writer joined a cultural immersion and guided familiarization tour of Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in Northwest China.
The journey offered a different view of China — not only of its modern cities, high-speed development and global influence, but also of the China that began as empire, memory, discipline and imagination.
“It’s mind-boggling, really,” Luna, who had visited China twice before, said of Xi’an and the journey around the ancient center.
Beyond the current headlines about China’s rapid development, she noted that Xi’an’s preserved relics, monuments, edifices, art and culture could overwhelm the senses in the best way. Here, history was not abstract. It was massive, visible and, at times, almost impossible to fully take in.
Guardians of clay
No encounter with Xi’an can be complete without the Terracotta Army.
Discovered by local farmers in 1974 while digging a well, the vast underground army was created to guard the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, who died in 210 B.C. Today, the site remains one of the most powerful archaeological discoveries in the world.
The warriors stand in formation with a silence that feels both military and mystical. Across the excavation pits are thousands of life-size soldiers, horses and chariots, each figure carrying distinct facial features, hairstyles, armor and posture. The effect is staggering not only because of the scale, but because of the individuality within it.
From a distance, they appear as an army. Up close, they become men.
The Terracotta Army also reveals how ancient legacy and modern science now work together in Xi’an.
Archaeologists and conservation experts continue to use technology to study and preserve the figures, especially the delicate pigments that once colored the warriors and are known to fade quickly when exposed to air.
In that sense, the site is not merely a monument to the past. It is also a continuing act of preservation, where the most advanced tools of the present are used to protect the fragile traces of an empire more than two millennia old.
For The Manila Times delegation, the visit became the natural emotional center of the trip — the moment when Xi’an’s reputation as the root of Chinese civilization turned from idea into overwhelming fact.
The ancient wall
If the Terracotta Army reveals Xi’an from below the earth, the City Wall introduces it from above.
Built during the Ming Dynasty over earlier city foundations, the ancient fortification stretches about 13.7 kilometers around the old city. It is widely regarded as one of the oldest, largest and best-preserved city walls in China, and remains among Xi’an’s most defining landmarks.
The wall offers a striking architectural dialogue. From its wide, crenelated top, visitors can look inward to the older city, where traditional roofs and neighborhoods still hold their ground and outward to the towers, roads and modern structures of a fast-moving metropolis.
By day, it is a place for walking, cycling and looking out across layers of time. By night, it transforms into a glowing outline of the ancient capital, lit by lanterns and modern installations that turn stone and shadow into theater.
Tour guide May shared that the wall was built with guidance from the North Star so travelers would not lose their way even in the dark. Whether heard as history, symbolism or local storytelling, the anecdote suited Xi’an perfectly. In this city, even directions seem to come from the heavens.
Silk Road flavors
The Silk Road comes alive most vividly in the Muslim Quarter, or Huimin Jie, located near the Drum Tower.
As the starting point of the ancient trade route, Chang’an was once among the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. During the Tang Dynasty, it welcomed merchants, monks, poets, envoys and travelers from Persia, Central Asia, India and beyond. That pluralistic inheritance remains deeply present in the Muslim Quarter, home to the Hui community for generations.
Here, history is not quiet. It’s alive.
The narrow alleys are dense with steam, the aroma of roasting meat, spices and fresh bread, and the rhythm of vendors preparing food in full view of passersby. There are skewers, sweets, hand-pulled noodles, flatbreads and local delicacies that speak of both northern Chinese wheat culture and the influence of Central Asian trade.
Among Xi’an’s best-known dishes are biangbiang noodles, broad hand-pulled ribbons served with the bold, hearty flavors of Shaanxi cuisine and made even more famous by the famously complex Chinese character used to write “biang.”
There is also mutton stew with hand-torn flatbread, a dish that carries the memory of caravans, markets and migration.
Near the bustle stands the Great Mosque of Xi’an, one of the city’s most graceful examples of cultural fusion. Built in the traditional Chinese architectural style, with courtyards, wooden archways and tiled roofs, it remains an active place of worship adorned with Arabic calligraphy.
In the Muslim Quarter, Xi’an’s history is tasted more than studied. Every alley reminds visitors that this ancient capital was never closed in on itself. It was a city shaped by movement.
Tang by night
If daytime in Xi’an belongs to contemplation, nighttime belongs to performance.
This is most vivid around the Grand Tang Dynasty Ever Bright City, a sprawling pedestrian cultural district near the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. Inspired by the grandeur of the Tang Dynasty, the area turns heritage into spectacle through lighting, music, costumes, movement and digital displays.
At night, visitors stream through the boulevard under modern installations and glowing facades, many dressed in Hanfu, the traditional clothing of the Han ethnic group. With elaborate hairstyles, flowing robes and detailed makeup, young Chinese women and men appear like figures from a Tang court painting, except that many are also holding smartphones, posing for videos or livestreaming the moment.
The effect is surreal and fascinating: ancient aesthetics revived for the digital age.
Street performances, poetry, dance, music and immersive displays fill the area with an energy that feels both nostalgic and futuristic. It is not history as a solemn lecture, but history restaged as nightlife, fashion, content and shared celebration.
This is where Xi’an becomes especially interesting. It does not only preserve the Tang Dynasty as a museum subject. It reimagines it as an experience for contemporary crowds.
The same spirit animated other cultural stops on the trip, including Tang Paradise and the Chang’an Twelve Hours Theme Block, where Tang-inspired architecture, performance and dining were presented as immersive encounters with the city’s golden age.
At one Tang Dynasty-style banquet, music opened the evening, dishes arrived with ceremony, and the meal became part of the performance. It was a reminder that in Xi’an, even dinner can become historical theater.
A museum of dynasties
The Shaanxi History Museum deepened the journey further.
Often described as a treasure house of ancient Chinese civilization, the museum offers a sweeping view of Shaanxi’s role in China’s rise and development. Its collections include relics from the Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang dynasties, among others, reflecting the province’s long position at the center of imperial power.
For visitors, the museum helps organize what Xi’an can otherwise make feel overwhelming. After seeing the walls, markets, pagodas and performances, the museum places those impressions into a longer line of dynastic continuity.
Bronze vessels, ceramics, murals, ornaments and ritual objects help show how power, belief, artistry and daily life evolved across centuries. The objects are ancient, but their placement within the museum makes clear that Xi’an’s present identity still rests on what these eras left behind.
It also reinforces one of the trip’s strongest impressions: Xi’an is not merely old. It is layered.
One walks through the city with the sense that every site belongs to a larger continuum — from excavation pit to palace-style museum, from mosque courtyard to neon-lit boulevard, from city wall to startup district.
Silk Road, reimagined
While Xi’an’s history draws travelers from around the world, the city is also positioning itself within China’s modern ambitions.
Its old identity as the starting point of the Silk Road gives it renewed relevance under the Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to revive and expand trade and connectivity across regions once linked by ancient routes. Where caravans once carried silk, paper, porcelain and spices, modern Xi’an now participates in logistics, research, education, manufacturing and technology.
The city is home to major universities and research institutions, including Xi’an Jiaotong University and has developed high-tech zones focused on software, aerospace, advanced manufacturing and other modern industries.
The point is not that technology has replaced history. In Xi’an, the stronger impression is that modern development is being framed as the next chapter of an older identity.
Modern Xi’an seeks to do the same, only with trains, research parks, digital systems and global logistics instead of camel caravans.
This is why the city’s contrasts feel less like contradictions and more like continuity.
A lived-in city
What makes Xi’an extraordinary is that it has avoided feeling like a sterile museum city.
Beneath the shadow of old walls, elderly residents move through morning exercises, parents guide children through busy streets, and performers keep older musical traditions alive. Not far away, young residents drink coffee in contemporary cafes, dress in Tang-inspired fashion for evening strolls, or gather in districts built for modern entertainment.
The past is everywhere, but the city does not appear trapped by it.
Instead, Xi’an seems to understand the power of letting history breathe. It allows heritage to remain ceremonial in some places, scholarly in others, delicious in its food streets and theatrical in its night districts. It gives visitors the rare sense of walking through a city that knows exactly what it has inherited and how much of that inheritance still matters.
Even the lighter stops had their own place in this larger story.
At the Qinling Wildlife In Danger Animals Protection and Research Center, about an hour and a half from the city center, visitors encountered another side of Shaanxi’s pride: conservation. The center is associated with the Qinling panda, a rare subspecies of giant panda found in the Qinling Mountains. Its most popular resident is Qi Zai, known for his unusual brown-and-white coloring and widely described as the only brown-and-white panda in captivity.
The stop offered a gentler close to the journey, away from warriors, walls and dynasties, but still rooted in what Xi’an and Shaanxi continue to protect: the rare, the ancient, the irreplaceable.
City of return
Xi’an can overwhelm first-time visitors because it refuses to be understood in only one way.
It is an imperial capital and a modern metropolis, an archaeological wonder and a food city, a religious crossroads and a performance stage, a place of research and technology built over layers of dynastic memory.
Its deepest gift to travelers is not simply that it shows China’s past. It shows how a civilization can carry its past forward without surrendering its future.
In Xi’an, the ancient heart of China still beats — beneath the earth, along the wall, through the alleys, under the lights and in the careful work of those determined to keep its stories alive.