The Tomb of Concubine Yang is situated about 60 km to the west of Xi'an. This is the penultimate stop on the Green Bus tour from the city. Yang Guefei's tomb is situated near to Xianyang City which was the capital of China's first dynasty. Although many of the tombs and the Famen Temple are a long way out of Xi'an, it is worth visiting these places if you have time. It takes a long day to see all the sights along this route and it's best to just pick a few of the more interesting tombs and Temples along the route and make the effort to see them properly.

Yang Guifei was the Emperor Tang Ming Huang's concubine who hung herself to save her lover's life and the empire. Yang's tomb is a popular spot with Chinese tourists and she is considered to be one of the most beautiful women ever to have lived. The story goes that when the Emperor took Yang into the gardens, beautiful flowers would shy away as they felt inferior in comparison to her beauty.

Until a few years ago, young Chinese girls would visit here on the third day of the third month in the lunar year, take some soil from around the tomb and mix it with flour. Popular belief holds that this “concubines powder” makes you beautiful if it is applied to the face. However, as the ground around the tomb began to disintegrate, authorities put a stop to this romantic practice by building a blue wall around the tomb! In the corridors surrounding the courtyard of the tomb, the work of numerous famous writers is displayed, depicting their views on this tragic love story.

Admission fee: RMB ￥ 20 per person
Open Hours: 9:00-17:00
Traffic: Travel Bus 3 at Xi'an Train Station can take you there.

Xiangji Temple is situated in Chang'an County, about 17.5 kilometers (12 miles) to the south of Xi'an City.

It was built in honor of the noted Buddhist monk Shandao, one of the initiators of a branch of Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, by his disciple Huai Yun after his master's death. Huai Yun named the temple “xiangji”, heaped fragrance, to suggest his master was holy as the Xiangji Buddha, an ancient Indian Buddha. Many Pure Land Buddhists, who believe in the purification of the soul through faith, began conducting activities at the temple, which led to it being considered the center and cradle of the Pure Land sect.

Two pagodas stand in Xiangji Temple. The larger pagoda, named Shandao Pagoda, is 33 meters (108 feet) tall, and was built in 680, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). The top two stories of the pagoda have worn away during its 1,300 years of history, leaving a remaining eleven stories. Its flank is stenciled with exquisitely engraved half-naked Buddha and strong pieces of script. To the east stands the pagoda's smaller counterpart, a brick pagoda built to commemorate another of Shandao's pious disciples, Jingye. Surrounding these two pagodas is a vista that is beautiful and tranquil. The renowned landscape poet Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty visited the Temple and composed a poem to praise its charms.

The Xiangji Temple had its heyday during the Tang Dynasty. Emperors like Gaozong and Zhongzong, and the Empress Wu Zetian all visited the site and had cults started in their honor. Today, countless tourists come from across China and the world to sightsee and reflect at the temple.

Admission fee: RMB ￥ 10 per person
Traffic: You can take bus at Yuxiangmen Station.

Near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Tang Paradise is located in the Qujiang Resort, southeast of the Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province.

It is a newly opened tourist attraction in April, 2005. Tang Paradise covers a total area of 1,000 mu (about 165 acres) and of which 300 mu (about 49 acres) is water. This tourist attraction not only claims to be the biggest cultural theme park in the northwest region of China but also the first royal-garden-like park to give a full display of the Tang Dynasty's (618-907) culture. Altogether, twelve scenic regions are distributed throughout Tang Paradise to provide visitors with the enjoyment of twelve cultural themes and a perfect exhibition of the grandness, prosperity and brilliance of the culture of the Tang Dynasty.

What makes Tang Paradise incredible is that it is no longer the garden mode of only water and mountains in the Chinese traditional sense. The outstanding designers of the magnificent Tang Paradise have integrated almost everything representative of the Tang Dynasty, such as the poetry, the songs and dance, the marketplaces, the food, the women's lifestyles, and science into every site using cultural themes, thus endowing every place with its own story and its own place in the tapestry of Tang Dynasty culture.

In the large number of buildings at Tang Paradise, one may see almost all architectural types of characteristic of the Tang Dynasty. In addition there are establishments for relaxing and song and dance shows about the civilization of the Tang Dynasty. Strolling in Tang Paradise, you are assured to get a full enjoyment, making you feel as if you were in a fairyland.

Many firsts are created here: the first and largest scale of buildings modeled on the Tang style in China, the first and most considerable groups of sculptures to show the poetic culture in the Tang Dynasty in China, the first and biggest single architecture modeled on the Tang style throughout China, the first theme park in China to cater to the five sense (vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste), the grandest fragrant project of the outdoors in the world, and the most spectacular water film on earth. Tang Paradise is praised as “Garden of History”, “Garden of Spirit”, “Garden of Nature”, “Garden of Human Culture” and “Garden of Art”.

The most special and amazing feast in Tang Paradise is taste. The word “taste” here does not refer to the delicious smell of food, but means that the whole Tang Paradise, like a fair lady, is full of aroma. Unbelievable, isn't it? But definitely true! You may wonder why. The secret is that there are incense burners here. Every few meters on both sides of the paths in Tang Paradise, there is an incense burner which looks like a street lamp. It is only 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) tall with incense coils burning inside. It is this fragrance that makes the whole place seem like mysterious Xanadu. Thus wherever you walk in Tang Paradise, assuredly, you can be embraced by its faint redolence.

In Tang Paradise, another surprising man-made wonder is the water film which claims to be the foremost in the whole world. The screen of the movie is a film of water; thus it can create a special kind of optical effect which makes the frame tridimensional. When watching the movie, you can witness that the beautiful night and the fan-like water surface become an ingenious integration. Every time the figures in the movie appear on the screen, it seems that they are flying to the sky or coming down from the heaven which throws you into a wonderful and illusory feeling that you were personally on the scene. Splendid, indeed!

Admission fee: RMB ￥ 50 per person
Traffic: Bus No.21, 24, 44, 212, 224, 237, 501, 601, 609, 610, 715, 720, 721 can take you there.

Known as the Buddhist Holy Land, Straw Hut (Caotang) Temple lies about 30 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Xi'an, in Caotangying Village of Huxian County.

Initially built in 401 A.D., the temple became a sacred place where the Buddhist master, Kumarajiva (one of the four Buddhist translators), translated Buddhist scriptures. The temple was a thatch-roofed house, so it got the name of Caotang Temple, meaning Straw Hut Temple.

Kumarajiva, a famous Buddhist master, became a monk at the age of seven. Due to his intelligence and diligence, he mastered the sprit of the Buddhism very well. He led 3,000 Buddhist followers to translate sutras from Sanskrit to Chinese. Instead of metaphrase, he used free translation, which made the scriptures easy to understand.

There are many features inside the temple.

Such as, Kumarajiva Dagoba is a precious art in Buddhist culture. Baohui Buddhist Master Preaching Inscription is the real script of the famous calligrapher Liu Gongquan.

The Mist of Straw Hut Temple is one of the eight famous scenic features in Shaanxi Province.There is a well inside the temple occasionally emits gusts of mist. The legend is that there is a piece of stone on one side, halfway down the well, and whenever there is a snake lying on the stone, the mist comes out, and travels over the countryside. The real cause of the mist, however, might be geothermal vapor, which, once out of the well, gets mixed with the smoke of incense over the temple. Later an elegant pavilion has been built over the well and was named as “the Misty Well”.

Admission fee: RMB ￥ 15 per person
Traffic: You can take bus at Yuxiangmen Station.

At a height of 2,160 meters above sea level and about 120km east of Xi'an, Mountain Huashan, literally translated as Mountain Flower, is a sight for sore eyes. The mountain has for centuries been deemed as one of China's five sacred mountains (Wu ye), along with one Mountain Hengshan to the northeast, Mountain Songshan and Mountain Taishan to the east and another Mountain Hengshan to the southeast.

Mountain Huashan, also known as Mountain Western (Xi yue) due to its geographical location in relation to the others, is famed as the most precipitous of the five. Along the 12km path leading from the foot of the mountain, where it starts at the Jade Fountain Temple (Yuchuan si), to its five peaks, you will get the chance to see some impressive scenes, including the strangely shaped granite peaks and the twisted pines, that make up this, one of the lesser visited of the holy mountains.

The peaks from above are said to resemble the petals of a huge plant, with the middle peak as the corolla, hence the mountain's name. Of the five peaks it is the southern peak (2,100 meters) that is the largest, closely followed by those in the east and west. The ascent provides not only natural scenery, but also a number of man-made constructions that, for better or worse, are now a part of the mountain's tourist culture. The route to conquer the peaks passes by temples, shrines, pavilions, terraces, carvings, statues, food stalls and hawkers, that appear interspersed between the stark granite paths and forested margins. Along the Green Dragon Ridge (Bilong ji), which connects the northern peak with the remaining peaks, the way is cut along a narrow rock ridge with steep cliffs on either side. Some of this route can be a little dangerous, despite the iron chains that are linked on the more precipitous sections.

Admission fee: RMB ￥ 50 per person in off-season, RMB ￥ 100 per person in midseason.
Traffic: Travel Bus 1 at Xi'an Train Station can take you there