A crowd of around 2,000 people has now gathered in the square. Most are looking at the sun without protection. I imagine a scene like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with blind people wandering around all over town tomorrow. We have the perfect spot, overlooking the square. I put fresh batteries in my camera. I don't want to miss the moment of the total eclipse.

7:04 p.m.: Still in the square.

We've been here over an hour now. More and more people are spilling into the square. This is going to be spectacular!

But…the sun is rather low…close to some buildings atop a hill on the edge of town.

"It looks a bit low," I say to Jingdi. "How much longer until the full eclipse?" We check our watches. I check the sun again. The realization rushes at me like a tidal wave--the sun's going to disappear before the eclipse.

7:09 p.m.: After another 5 minutes thinking and hoping I'm wrong, we decide to take action. The next 10 minutes are a blur. We run around like headless chickens, first to a nearby hotel where we are denied access to a top floor bedroom. We run back onto the street, looking for another building we can enter and find none. We run back into the hotel, past reception and into the elevator, taking it to a restaurant on the sixth floor. We burst out of the elevator into the restaurant, Jingdi shouting at people for a window. We are directed to a side room with a great view, but in the wrong direction.

We run back to the elevator, to the top floor, make an attempt to get onto the roof, and finally head back down to the street after discovering all doors locked to us.

7:19 p.m.: On the street in Tongchuan.

The "moment" has arrived. We, along with several thousand other people, gaze up at a hill on the edge of town and curse its existence, as the sky blackens and a shadow of darkness sweeps over the town. It's a great moment, but I can't help but think we've been cheated by that damn hill.

7:40 p.m.: We leave town by taxi, having missed the last bus back to Xi'an. I pull out my binoculars and focus back on the hill across town…the one that blocked our eclipse…and imagine it exploding into a thousand pieces. At that point Jingdi's cellphone rings and she opens a photo of a perfect solar eclipse taken by her father somewhere near Urumqi in Xinjiang.

Well… There's always next year. Another full solar eclipse will pass across part of China on July 22, 2009.