Xi'an: Terra Cotta Warriors and Muslim Night Market
PIC: Terra Cotta Warriors site
I awoke later than I wanted, around 8:30 a.m. or so. I had breakfast yet again at May First--those great chicken buns!--and headed to the train station to book passage to my next destination, Chengdu, Sichuan Province. I spent 15 minutes in line before reaching a woman who told me to wait in a line at another window, which was closed for lunch. Having little else to do, I just waited at the closed window for it to open, and as soon as the woman at this window came back from lunch, the woman in the next window over told me in English that she would help me. 30 minutes of waiting in line to find the correct window! I feel lucky to have booked my sleeper ticket.
PIC: The Terra Cotta Warriors on their excavation site.
The buses to the Terra Cotta Warriors departed nearby, so I went to the bus stop and met a Brit from Manchester who was traveling with a Chinese girl from Guangdong. We decided to explore the warriors together.
PIC (above): A Terra Cotta Warrior up close
PIC (below): My mug with the Terra Cotta Warriors.
The Terra Cotta Warriors were...the Terra Cotta Warriors: the greatest archaeological find in China of the last century, arguably (Sha'anxi is filled with finds that could take this title!), thousands of years old, forgotten for that long, listed in no text, guarding China's first great (unifying) emperor. The statues themselves are kept on the dig site; the museum was built on top of the excavation areas. The setup of the museum has the visitors walk around up higher than the site on a walkway around the excavation, which is ongoing. The soldiers are of unique heights and faces, no two identical. The faces, poses, and armor all create a ... cheery haunting feeling to the place. Indy would have loved seeing the place: archeology in action! The bodies/body shapes are basic, but when creating thousands of figures the artist probably didn't worry about correct musculature or perfect proportions and joints.
PIC (above): The bronze chariot
PICS (below): A group of warriors, another group of warriors, a group of warriors and horses, a warrior and his horse close up.
Also on exhibit, after 8 years of reconstruction and restoration from chunks and pieces, the two bronze chariots in 1/2 scale were amazingly done. Of course, China so far represents the horse best in its art. Somehow, this animal they portray most artistically and realistically, capturing its spirit as well as its physicality.
Every vendor on the site--which I should add is an enormous park that required us to walk some 15 minutes from the entrance to reach the museum--sold the same merchandise, and the photography on the postcards was dismal, so I didn't buy anything. The Brit, his friend, and I took the bus back to town, ate at KFC, and departed. At the hostel, I burned my photos onto CD, uploaded a few, then bored with the slow internet there, went out to walk the streets in a new direction. What I found was a Muslim night market in an area of the Islamic quarter unfrequented by any tourists, foreign or Chinese. Far fewer people walked the streets, and none of the food vendors shouted "hullo!" The street was lit by an occasional lightbulb but mostly by strings of led Christmas lights that extended for over a mile down every street and alley, running pink and green into smokey darkness. The tops of the buildings here were blown out and ruined, the hovels below filled with tobacco stores and food vendors, the eerie sounds of old men singing in Arabic echoing hollowly into the streets from dimly lit courtyards.
And I didn't bring my camera! So I can't share it with others. A weird unreal experience all to myself...one of countless so far in China.
I bought a "meat disc," a deep fried disc-shaped dough pancake stuffed with Chinese chives and lamb, to take to the hostel and munch while I made tea. But while cleaning my teaware I found they held a sediment at the bottom, deposited by the electric kettle, which upon inspection carried a sticky layer of powder that would not rinse out. Grossed out by the thought of what I already drank, I skipped the tea.