China Day 17, Terra Cotta Soldiers

Wednesday July 13^th

I slept well on the train. We had a couple of hours of daylight on the train before we arrived at Xi'an Station to watch the countryside go by. Getting out of the station was chaotic, with people and buses and traffic going every which way. We got to our hotel, left our luggage and then went for a quick breakfast. Then back to the hotel for a shower. Then we were met by our local guide, Michael, or MJ as he wanted to be called. He was to be our guide for the trip to the Terra Cotta Warriors. We took a minibus for about an hour to get to the museum site. On the way Michael gave us a great deal of information about China and the Terra Cotta soldiers. He is a GAP guide most of the time, and spoke English very well. He told us that he went to Hong Kong awhile back and was surprised to hear that there had recently been a demonstration there to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He had heard nothing of it reported in the Chinese media. This demonstrated to him that although he thinks China has come a long way in regards to human rights and media reporting, that it still has a ways to go. He said that things are much better today than twenty years ago and that they do hear about things like mining accidents now and some recent news from the outside world, which previously would have been covered up entirely. However, the Chinese people think that Taiwan belongs to China and so does Tibet.

The Terra Cotta Warriors were originally discovered by a couple of local farmers who were digging a well. Even though all the land and anything in it belongs to the Communist Government the farmers and their families were rewarded for the great historic find with new homes. Since then several of the farmers have died, but we ate lunch at the home of one of them. The food was good and mostly vegetarian.

Then Michael walked us to the actual Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum. There were lots of tourists around as this is a very popular site for foreign tourists and Chinese tourists as well. So, Michael held a meeting and told us all what we would see before we went in.

The museum site consists of three large pits that are all covered by a roof enclosure that protects the warriors from the elements. The first one we visited was the largest one and contains about eight thousand total, some of which are still buried, or in pieces and about four thousand that are restored. When they discovered the site they found that most of the warriors had been crushed by the collapsed roof of the mausoleum and by vandals of the ages. The soldiers were originally painted colours with natural dyes but most of that has disappeared after they were dug up and brought up into the air. The area is huge and impressive. The warriors are in rows in eight trenches. The viewing area, which is a walkway around the pit, is about five metres above the trenches. We walked to and went through the other two sites which are still being excavated. We could see some of the archeologists working and trying to restore other warriors, much like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

At the second pit there was spot where we could pose with some fake warriors. I wound up taking photos for everyone in the group, and then put down my camera bag and my waterproof bag with my iPod in it down on the floor, and handed both my cameras to two people in the group to take photos of me. After the third pit we visited a museum that housed two bronze chariots and horses that they unearthed recently. They are done to half scale and both have four horses. One is probably for the guards and the second for the emperor. They are beautiful.

Then we drove back to the hotel. On the way back I couldn't find my camera bag and realized I'd left it behind. I was mad but it was only a camera bag, a lens cap and four rechargeable batteries, right? It's just stuff. But when I got back to the hotel I remembered the waterproof blue bag and the iPod. I was really upset. I tried to explain the problem to Rally, but it is really hard to explain things to her sometimes. Then I remembered that Michael said he was going back there the next day. So, I asked him to check to see if there was a lost and found there and if it had been turned in.

Rally took us for a night walk orientation through the city and we saw the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower and the area known as the Muslim Quarter. Muslims in China? Yes, their history extends back to the time of the silk route and the explorers from the west who came to China to trade for silk, tea and opium. Then we broke up, and Rally went back to the hotel. Most of the group went to a restaurant in the area, but Paul had his heart set on going to a noodle restaurant that he had read about in Lonely Planet, so I accompanied him. He had two bowls of soup with a 3.8metre 6cm wide noodle. One of the soups was shark fin, but I declined and had an eggplant dish and a fried chicken and pine nuts dish. We had a beer as well and a good time. As usual it was fun trying to talk to the waitresses.

When we got back to the hotel we decided we wanted another beer so we went to a local outside eatery and had a beer and watched people and traffic go by. Then we called it a night.