The Terracotta army

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RYAN...

We arrived in Xi'an in the early morning straight off a 12 hour sleeper train from Beijing.  Xi'an is nice...sort of the same as everywhere else in China though. First on the agenda was finding a way to get to the next place of travel (Kunming), so I dashed off to find a bank (which swallowed my card...grrrr) and get some money and then try to buy a train ticket (involves lining up for 40 minutes with the sweltering crowd who also wants tickets).  We couldn't get a hard sleeper so we swallowed our luxurious ways and brought a hard seat for 53 hours. 53 hours! Well, we thought...we can do it.

The army lies in wait.
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The Terracotta Warriors are the only real reason that we came to Xi'an but they were worth the visit. Well, the "old city walls" were really cool until we discovered that they were constructed 20 years ago. Anyway, back in the day the first emperor of China (Emperor Qin) must have been mighty paranoid of people taking advantage of him in the afterlife, so he had his workers construct an army of Terracotta Warriors to protect him in his eternal sleep. Nobody knew about them until some lowly peasants dug a well in the wrong spot and unearthed the army. The really interesting thing is that the army is an exact replica of how armies were positioned during the Qin dynasty and they give historians a better insight into the way the Chinese thought and fought back then.

In China the food can be really hot!
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The Warriors stand in three pits. The first pit is largely intact and composed of soldiers (all individual in facial expressions and stature - some skinny, some with pot bellies). The second pit is the cavalry and archers and the third pit is the generals and commanders.  Sadly the second and third pits are mostly destroyed and broken. Amazingly they haven't finished unearthing most of the Warriors and excavations are still in progress.

It was amazing to walk though and see these 2000 year old Warriors.  I was mjore amazed that they had stayed in one piece for so long: terracotta breaks easily you know. My theory is that the broken Warriors are the ones that have been killed of maimed defending the Emperor when people have tried to graverob him and the intact ones are the ones that were not hurt in the battle and lived to defend for another day. Maybe.

Xi'ans Muslim quarters have lots of different snacks on offer.
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The second part of Xi'an was just a time filler which involved looking around the Muslim quarters.  This was really interesting because I have never seen Chinese Muslims before. They don't really go by the Muslim dress code or anything - they sort of make up their own rules. They had great food and some really cool shops to look in. I saw a mosque but we didn't go in because I don't think we were allowed.

Anyway - 53 hours to Kunming hard seat here we come.