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Our flight into Xi'an was easy enough, arriving about 30 minutes late. It was quite late in the evening when we got to our hostel, so the only thing we did on our first night was to book a tour for the following day. At 9:30am we set out in a minibus, the tour group consisted of just 11 people (including ourselves) with an English speaking tour guide. The tour was ridiculously good value, costing just over 10 pounds each and included breakfast, a factory producing Terracotta replicas, the Terracotta Army itself, and the Lintong Museum (the Terracotta Army alone should cost 6 pounds). The first stop at the factory showed us how the replica warriors were made, from the small figures just a few centimetres high, to the lifesize warriors standing almost 2 metres tall. Our next stop was the excavation site of the Terracotta Army. The army was made to defend the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Whilst he is credited with uniting the states of China for the first time. His tomb was erected over the 36 years of his reign as emperor, and although the actual tomb has not been opened, it is said to be a vast city covering over 50 square kilometres. There were no records of the army in ancient writings, and it remained undiscovered until 1974. We were able to view the excavated pits, each containing different figures. The first contained a mixture of military figures, of which most lay broken into pieces. The second was the 'Command Centre, and contained several figures of generals and high ranking officers, although many again, either lay damaged or were headless. The third pit we viewed was the largest, with around 1000 warriors standing in formation ready to defend their emperors soul from his enemies. It was a very impressive sight and well worth a visit. The Lintong Museum houses several relics from the Han and Tang dynasties that followed that of Qin, it was quite interesting but it was the Terracotta Army that was the highlight of the day.
The following day we were scheduled to catch an overnight train to Beijing departing in the evening. That gave us the morning and most of the afternoon to further explore the city. We walked to the Bell and Drum Towers, which used to be heard chiming in the dawn (Bell Tower) and drumming out the dusk (Drum Tower). From there we explored the cramped streets of the Muslim quarter, where we ended up bartering with a woman over some souvenir chopsticks. We got the price down to about 60% the original, more by luck than judgement, not bad for us, although apparently you should aim to buy at 50% the start price. Later we walked down to the South Gate of the city walls, which stretch for 12 kilometres around the city centre. Xi'an is a much more modern city than Guilin, and proved very interesting to explore. It would have been nice to have the chance to explore a little further outside the city walls, but we have a train to catch from Beijing in less than a week and we don't want to miss out on the sites of the capital. Up to this point we are both really enjoying China, it is so different in every way to anywhere else we have been!
J.
previous travel blog entry
Bill&Sheila says:
Wow! What an experience Hannah! love Sheila