It was a snappy twenty-hour train ride to Xi'an from Huhehaote, during which chilly, brown fields and pink blooming trees gave way to bright greenness and warmth. Xi'an was on our to-do list because of the famous Terracotta Army, a sight that was at once overwhelming and odd. Giant, eerie hangars shelter the partially-excavated rows of soldiers, which is odd enough, but then there are the booths in every hangar where you can buy statuettes of the soldiers playing baseball and photographs of yourself dressed as one of the warriors. I couldn't shake the feeling that the place was being run more like a profit machine than an institute for historical preservation. Of course, the five malls you have to walk through to get back to the bus stops and parking lot don't do anything to disabuse one of that impression, even though they are mostly empty — after all, how many opportunities to buy cheap figurines does each tourist really need?

Back in the city, we were staying in a hostel next to the Drum Tower, a central landmark and popular kite-sellers' haunt, and steps away from Xi'an's Muslim Quarter, attractions less fraught with mixed feelings for me. We walked in to the maze-like Muslim Quarter for dinner on our first day in the city, and found ourselves back there for almost every meal after that. The variety, and the visibility, of the eating options in this neighborhood were amazing. Almost all the storefronts are restaurants, or else shops selling dried fruits and nuts. The first layer of street vendors is also composed of dried fruits and nuts, spread on top of massive carts. Scattered amongst those are smaller carts, selling an incredible variety of treats: lotus starch paste, steamed rice discs, grilled meat, fried bread, sesame candy, steamed dumplings, lentil and dried fruit paste, and fried stuffed breads and pancakes.

We couldn't eat everything at once, but during that first trip into the market we found ourselves sampling a pretty impressive array. I couldn't resist the bright yellow lentil paste, but to be honest, while I'm usually down with bean sweets, this one didn't really do it for me. It had a little too much distinctive lentil taste and texture — earthy and grainy — that just conflicted with the flat sweetness of the added sugar. We also tried an array of fried, baked, and candied treats, like sesame brittle and fried honey-soaked fritters. Once again, the bean-based treat (the green square with a stamped pattern on top) was a loser, but the rest, well, they seemed like a combinatorics exercise that couldn't go wrong: given the ingredients honey, flour, nuts, and hot oil, how many things can you create?

My favorite street treats from that day were these fried orange discs. I have no idea what they are, or if there are multiple fillings, and my research has turned up nothing. The outside was mild and sweet and squooshy, and the inside was composed of nuts and rosewater. Any clues out there?

Lastly, we bought some of the vibrantly colored dried fruit to have on hand as a snack. When we ate the fruit over the next few days, we found it to be a little hit-or-miss. Some of the fruits were excellent, while others were over-sweetened and sulfury. But they sure do look good, especially those yellow cherries, which seemed to glow from within.

Eventually we made it past the carts and into one of the restaurants, where we had a few trays of dumplings. Most notably, we had soup dumplings filled with lamb, something it had not even occurred to me might exist. While pork still seems naturally more suited for the role, the lamb made for a nice change of pace, particularly when combined with the spicy dipping sauce (which may have been intended for the vegetable dumplings, but worked equally well, or better, with the lamb).