"Terracotta Warrior Territory"

An overnight train journey (again with some none smelly, fairly pleasant carriage buddies) brought us to Xi'an in the Hubei province. Whilst Xi'an is another large Chinese town, here we felt happier as the city is an old walled city and so still can feel quite small and homely with the old wall, tower gates and watch towers around the central town area. One of our conclusions from these 6 months is that maybe we aren't really into the bib cities!

Our first day was taken leisurely to recover from the train journey and find our way around town. The town has a lovely central square with the bell and drum towers used in ancient times to signal the time of day. We wandered up the steps and around both towers - banged a few drums, watched a drum show, rang a few bells. We then walked through the very quaint islamic area with its dried fruit markets (I'd never seen dried Kiwis before!) and its quirky stalls selling all sorts of nic nacs and souvenirs.

It's crazy to think that they lay there undiscovered for over 2,000 years...some more recent burials of family members had been done in the walls of the pits without the people digging even knowing what was underneath!

On our second day in the city we headed off to see the Terracotta Army about 45 mins out of the centre. The army is really quite amazing. The story goes (as there is no documentation about the history of this army) that a famous Qin Chinese emperor died 2,200 years ago and this army was buried with him in 3 different pits to protect him in the afterlife. In the 3 seperate burial chambers there are over 8,000 soldiers - some on chariots, some of horseback, some kneeling, some standing in the fighting position. Many of these have been damaged over the years, as although they were buried deep underground with fantastic roofing protection, some were discovered by enemy fighters or burnt...however many of them are still intact and in fantastic condition. They were only discovered by accident by a famer digging a well in 1974 and work has been going on (and is still going on) to uncover all of the army very carefully so as not to unecessarily damage them. It's crazy to think that they lay there undiscovered for over 2,000 years...some more recent burials of family members had been done in the walls of the pits without the people digging even knowing what was underneath! Each of the figures are different in their facial expressions and life like in size and were even painted, but since they have been exposed to the air then most of the colour has now gone. They were also holding weapons and many of the blades were still shiny!

We spent most of the day at the Terracott warrior site and then mooched back to town for food, coffee and another chill out before our train journey to Beijing.