Xi'An
Hectic and crazy day yesterday. Arrived on the train at 7:30 in the morning after a restless night. I got my first case of diarrhea (nothing to bad this time) on the train and so I got to master the use of squat toilets on a bouncing, rolling train at 2 in the morning. I had previously gotten ok at using the squat toilets (really not that hard once you get used to them - I just don't like them) but this was a more acrobatic task as the train was kicking and bucking pretty fiercely at times. I managed quite fine but I was not feeling well enough to sleep, so I was pretty tired when we rolled in.
I had made a friend who was heading back to school (she used me to practice English on and I was happy to talk to someone so it worked out). Her uncle met her at the train station and they offered to drive me to my hostel. One less thing to deal with.
I have been in the hostel for all of 30 minutes when I find out a bus is heading out to the TerraCotta Warrios, Emperor Qin Shingwan's (spelled wrong of course)tomb and the Natural History museum. All the entrance tickets are included so for the include breakfast, Enlgish speaking (mostly) tour guide, and transport there and back, I only had to pay 60Yuan more than I would have paid by buying the tickets myself. 60 Yuan for a guide and not having to figure out the bus system sounded good to me so off I went.
Had run into this guy named Rob from Vancouver in the lobby of the hostel, so he tagged along to and ended up being a good travel mate for the two days here in Xi'An (he headed out a few minutes ago to Vietnam ... we might meet up in Thailand in a month and a half).
The TerraCotta Warriors were very impressive. Oh ... getting ahead of myself.
We stopped at the Emperor's Tomb but there was not much to see there as the Chinese have not excavated the site. This is the first Emporer of China. He united the Chinese nation 2200 years ago while he was in his early 20's through a number of bloody and nasty battles. He is the Emperor at the centre of the story in the movie Hero. Anyhow, they know where he is buried and his tomb is still intact but the Chinese don't feel modern technology is up to removing him from his tomb yet without destroying to much of the site and the artifacts so they are leaving him there. After all he has been there for 2200 years, he can wait a few more hundred until tech is up to snuff. Smart plan, I think.
So off we go to the TerraCotta Warriors. Most of them were destroyed in the uprisings after the Emperors death and in the 2200 years that followed as looters and rioters went through most of the site. Some however survived and were discovered by a Chinese farmer digging a well in March of 1974. At the three sites discovered over the next two years they have discovered enough warriors that they are still digging them out and some of site three was still buried and covered as they worked through it.
The warriors themselves were incredibly detailed. Each warrior appeared to have his own unique facial features (from the ones I could get close enough to see). They all stood a little different and were lined up as the Chinese archaeologists put them back together painstakingly. I have lots of pictures of the site, but it is hard to get a good view of it from pictures. (ask Joel or Lauren if you want to see though ... they have a few of the pics)
The first site is the largest and was basically a huge aircraft hanger over a gigantic pit. You could easily park several 747s in this pit. It was half full of rebuilt warriors and half full of broken pieces of warriors on the ground as they had been found.
Three main types of warriors have been found. Footsoldiers, archers, and horsemen. Amongst the footsoldiers there are three basic ranks (lacky, mid range officer and general (only 7 generals found so far amongst the tens of thousands of lacky troops).
They also found half sized bronze replicas of the Emperor's chariot and his guard chariot (complete with ancient police siren - a 2200 cop car!). We could get close to these and to a few examples of each type of warrior as they were encased behind glass in a central chamber.
The detail was stunning. Each warrior even had the patterns on the bottom of his shoe done, even though most of them stood flat on the ground. Different hair styles, armour patterns, etc have apparently led some scholars to believe that the troops were modeled after the Emperor's own massive army.
They have recovered many of the bricks that lined each 'street' where the warriors stood. A huge collection of bricks is nothing that special, but when you think that they are 2200 years old, it makes them seem a little cooler.
Off to Shinzhen tomorrow. I have to figure out how to get to the airport (it is actually in a nearby city of XianYang - which I'm told was the capital of China for almost 1500 years but now is a city of about 60,000). From there I hit Hong Kong and try to find a plane ticket to see Berger in Taiwan. No luck yet finding anything for less than 2500Yuan ($350CDN) which is more than I wanted to pay especially given that I will then need to fly back out to Vietnam. I am sure I will have better luck when I hit HongKong but time will tell.