Xian and the terracotta warriors
Sometimes things are famous for the sake of being famous, much like many ‘famous’ paintings, statues, buildings etc, I have often wondered, why, out of all the things there are, is this particular thing famous? I mean why is the Mona Lisa famous, its not even that amazing, its just a painting that looks pretty similar to other paintings.
So it was with the Terracotta warriors, its probably the second most famous thing in China, so you HAVE to go see it. I contemplated skipping it but then thought I better not. I do remember seeing a documentary on the warriors years ago and thinking that one day I would get to China and see them. And here I was in China doing that. Don’t get me wrong, its pretty cool but so are other things…
Anyway before I get ahead of myself. We were heading to Xian home of the warriors and not much else on an overnight train. Nicer than Russian trains, but essentially the same. Slept a bit then arrived early morning, we jumped on a bus and made it to the Shuyuan hostel, which after Beijing was oozing charm and character. It was really beautiful, set around courtyards and all very nice. As we were essentially there to see one thing we got ourselves together grabbed some delicious steamed buns for breakfast and easily found the bus heading out to the site. Already this was a million times easier than the great wall experience. The bus took us right to the gate for only 7 yuan ($2) and we got a great half price student discount to get in which was good as the full price of 90 is totally ridiculous.
So for those who don’t know what the warriors are, essentially there was an angry king/leader guy who for some reason built thousands and thousands of life sized terracotta warriors, possibly to protect him in death. The cool thing is, is that every single one of them is individual with different faces, armours and shoes, there are horses, archers and all different type of warriors, but mainly the standard soldiers. So in the 1970’s some farmers digging around found the remains and ever since then archaeologists have been painfully putting them back together in 3 huge covered warehouses built over where they were dug up.
The warehouses are almost more impressive than the actual warriors in some points.You can’t really get that close to them as they are far down in these pits. We started with the smallest pit, pretty cool, some horse, soldiers. Then moved on to the 2nd biggest pit ready for more amazing-ness however strangely there was just the pits with no soldier’s in them, or they haven’t actually been uncovered yet, strangely unimpressive….even more strange was all the people taking photos of the empty pits.
The last one was very impressive, had over 6000 warriors all in rows. Very cool. The place was almost set out for the worst viewing for people hough, all the warriors face a high wall so you can’t see their faces and quite far down. I thought they could have done a better job in maximising the viewing. It was pretty cool though mostly just to see them in real life. Upon emerging from pits we headed to the museum which was overloaded with intense Chinese tour groups ( who are super intense…) , it was too much for us and we got out and fought off the people selling all sorts of stupid warrior related stuff. You could even have your photo taken with fake warriors then put on a mug! amazing! We made it out though grabbed some, lunch and headed back to town. Warriors done.
For the evening we headed down to the Muslim quarter which was a fun lively area with lots of Muslim restaurants which equal good bread. All Muslim’s in China seem to sell the same time of delicious bread, grilled with cumin, oil and chilly…very good. As it was our last night altogether as Tom was leaving in the morning to head off to a mountain and I was going to Chengdu, we had a few beers at the hostel bar then headed off to bed.
My train the next day was leaving at 4 and me and Rdoc had a pretty chilled out day, getting some internet stuff done and posting some things home. Went through the muslim quarter again which was really huge and full of alleyways with markets and food, very cool, probably the best part of the city. Then it was time to leave, off on my own (although not really as Rdoc came to Chengdu a day after me), another long 20 hour train ride south to Chengdu, home of Panda’s and spices
Tags: 1, China, TRAVELS 2008
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