I think I walked every street within this city’s walls. I usually like the self-guided walking tour (i.e. getting lost), but this one went on a bit longer than I planned. Here’s what I found:

In Xi’an, like Beijing and probably other large cities, gleaming new wealth lives next door to staggering but persistent old poverty. I spent my first day here walking to nearly every tourist spot within the walls. I ate breakfast at the hostel—fresh coffee and a Spanish omelet—then headed out.

It was raining by then. I bargain-shopped for an umbrella as the rain got heavier, finding one for Y10. That sounds like something that would make a good insult, like calling someone cheap, saying he’d bargain shop for an umbrella in the rain. Except I’d be talking about myself.

I walked south on Shangde Lu toward Revolutionary Park. Merchants shouted “halloo” as I passed, and one woman, probably a prostitute, grabbed my shirtsleeve and started pulling me toward her salon barking, “You want massage.” It wasn’t stated as a question.

I yanked my arm free and ducked into the park.

It was pouring by now. I took shelter under an awning with a family who seemed to find me entertaining. The father, who was 42, offered me a cigarette. I flipped through my dictionary and tried to say simple phrases, like “It’s raining,” and “My name is Chris.” Stumbling to introduce myself, I handed the dictionary to the father. He read the Chinese characters, then looked at me and said, “My name is Louise,” like the example. I’m pretty sure the family left thinking my name was Louise.

I left Revolutionary Park and headed south again, toward the Muslim Quarter. I turned west at Xiwa Lu, passed No. 2 Jiaotong University Hospital. I stuck to major thoroughfares on my first run through the city, which meant I had to dodge hurried cabs and oblivious bus drivers every time I wanted to cross an intersection.

Xi’an doesn’t have hutong (dense residential streets where people live practically on top of each other) like Beijing; it just has slums. The back alleys were quiet in the rain. Residents huddled in doorways and noodle shops, clustering around small coal fires or cooking grills.

The rain drew out the browns here. Everything looked like it had a fresh coat of mud on it. Few cars passed through the narrow roads. Mostly it was just bikes and motorcycles and pedestrians under umbrellas. I kept going south until I reached the Drum Tower, where children ran along the parapet thumping the arcane instruments, their parents close in tow.

I found a restaurant nearby. “This is a dumpling restaurant,” the hostess told me as I walked in, as if I were the sort of person who would be dissuaded by such a warning. I ate fat lumps of meat and spices wrapped in dough, with vinegar drizzled on top.

Continuing south, then east, I found the Forest of Steles Museum, a library of ancient texts carved on stone tablets, some set down by emperors. A handful of dynasties made Xi’an their capital, so there was a wealth of material lying around.

I turned east, taking a roundabout route back to my hostel. A block past the main strip of commerce and tourism, China is again a third-world country. I wandered up an alleyway, a place that smelled vaguely like a sewer. I suspect few of the dwellings here have indoor plumbing. Men played cards and a board game the looked like Go, the Japanese strategy game. Women played mahjong. Children ran through the streets, oblivious to their country’s income gap. I saw young kids and middle aged or older adults, but almost no one my age.

The people I saw in their 20s all showed outward signs of new money: cell phones, designer (or knock-off) clothes, styled and colored hair, and that strange pinky nail that’s kept longer than all the others.

Xi’an struck me as a gray and brown city with colorful people. Even when the rain subdued the people’s usual brightness, they showed through in vivid hues. Women in orange shirts and blue jeans ran after lime green and cherry red buses whose sides were painted with the Olympic rings. Taxis, all a matching shade of turquoise, flooded the streets. The Drum Tower was a shade of red reflecting both China’s imperial past and its more recent communist history. The girl I watched running along the parapet wore a pink sweater, and her mother’s top matched the tower.

When the rain came down the heaviest, people hid under silver, pink and blue umbrellas, and shook the water out of their dyed hair. Later, I followed a squad of green camouflaged workers until they passed a gray-haired woman whose purple shirt caught my eye.

In the Forest of Steles Museum, everything reverted to black and white. Ancient Chinese characters were chiseled out of black volcanic stone, leaving pale gray inscriptions. A black-clad artist pressed sheets of white paper to the tablets, then dabbed them with ink until only the unimpressed script showed.

Poverty didn’t sap the color, as I thought it might. I watched a girl in a red and white striped shirt ride down a brown street under red awnings. I saw a child, maybe five or six years old, wearing orange shoes, bright red pants and a yellow shirt, almost neon in its boldness, standing under an eve catching water in a little cup. Another kid in green and blue, maybe 10 years old, stared at me while I watched his friend take aim at a bird with a slingshot. The shooter’s red pants probably gave the targeted fowl enough warning to evade the stone.

And where the people lacked anything vibrant to wrap themselves in, they sold it in fruits and vegetables from hand- or bike-drawn carts. Green celery, golden apples, yellow bananas and other fruits I didn’t recognize were stuffed into red bags in exchange for crumpled Yuan of every color.

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