there isn't much of a difference, really.
The trip to Xi'an reaffirmed my loathing of tour group travel, but I bought a teapot that can dispense two different teas at once, and that makes up for a great deal.
Almost nothing on that trip quite compares to Wednesday night, when Hayley and I crawled home from an excessive bout of bar hopping, only to discover that we were locked out of the dormitories.
Luckily, Beijing at 4.30 in the morning is more hospitable than you might think. 20 minutes of giggle-filled walking took us to a 24-hour xiaochi (literally, "small eats"), where we laughed our way back into sobriety over the cheapest thing on the menu: fresh steamed buns. Outside, the sky was whitening over Wudaokou, the roads were unfurling into life, the dust that settled over the night began rising in eager clouds. When the street vendors split the new watermelons, the sweet wet redness announced daybreak. We stumbled home to a persimmon sunrise.
about two hours later, I was in class, my eyes prised open by dint of a latte and chocolate covered coffee beans.
This proves to me that sometimes, you could pay [lots of money] to go to exotic historical places to construct your life stories ("I saw the terracotta warriors"), or you could miss your dorm curfew and let the life stories unfold by themselves. And if I've learned anything from being here, more often than not, 那到底没有什么差别.