The terracotta army in Xi'an. A 2000 year old collection of over 8000 warriors protecting China's first true Emperor. I can't tell you how many classes I've taken that have referenced this 8th wonder of the world. The terracotta army has to be right up there with Egypt's pyramids as the most elaborate necropolis ever. The sheer wealth of the emperor, to be able to force his subjects to create on such a grand scale. Amazing.
http://picasaweb.google.com/christine7world/XiAn
So, there was no question about whether or not I'd be going to Xi'an. Some locations are maybes, some are nos, Xi'an was an unquestioned yes. I flew in, collected my bag (first off the plane), and jumped on the shuttle bus. There, a funny thing happened. Some girl tried to elbow me aside to get a ticket for the bus - there are always more people than tickets for the shuttle bus, so elbowing is required - and I said, "Hey! no shoving me aside!" She spoke a little English and thought that this was hysterical, so she saved me a prime seat at the front of the bus. We talked during the hour long ride into Xi'an's center. Assertiveness really is a positive trait in China.
I was dropped off at the end of the shuttle line in front of the Melody Hotel. I had an address and directions to Shuyuan Hostel, but no clue as to the distance involved and it was sprinkling, so I tried to get a cab. No luck in getting a cabbie to understand where I wanted to go. I swear, I was pronouncing everything correctly. I think that cab drivers just can't understand anything coming from a Westerner. They're distracted by our strange colored hair. So, I set off on foot. This was actually quite nice. I was walking along South Street on a Friday night. There was lots of neon, loads of people and amazing things to look at.
I found my hostel, and it was a lovely 3 story 3 courtyard complex. Beautiful. Before even dumping my bag, I got myself booked onto a Terracotta tour for the next day. Priorities. :) Then, the trouble started. I went down to my $3/night dorm room. Down, because the room was in the basement level. That's fine, I'm only sleeping in my room, I don't really need natural light. However, walking down the stairs, I was met by overpowering varnish fumes. They were remodeling the hostel and the fumes were intense. OK. I can handle it. I open the door to find two sets of bunk beds, a desk and a concrete floor covered in a 2-5 mm thick layer of sediment and old cigarette butts. Yuck. OK, I'm still dealing. I settle in to go to sleep. That's when the swarm of mosquitos struck. Crap. I was too tired to deal with changing rooms that night, so I suffered through it, arising at 8:30 for my tour with relief. I vowed not to spend another night there. This was reinforced by my need to climb upstairs and down a courtyard to use the toilet in the middle of the night. Horrid.
The horrendous night behind me with only 2 mosquito bites to show for it (thank you citronella), I set off with singing spirit for the Terracotta Army. The tour left at 9:40am and I couldn't believe that I was really going to be there in person. Well, I wouldn't actually get there for another few hours. This was a tour in the classic sense of the word. This wasn't transit to the site with a guide once we were there, this was an actual tour. For those who are fortunate enough not to have taken a tour, these fabulous itineraries always include 4 things: 1) the major draw, the thing that people book the tour to see; 2) a lesser draw, something kind of interesting but that you wouldn't go to see if it wasn't included in the tour; 3) a factory/folk art site, the place where people still practice traditional craft relating to the major draw; 4) the restaurant, someone's cousin's place that offers an incentive to the tour company to bring in the tourists.
This tour started out visiting the lesser site, Ban Po village. It's an Neolithic archaeological site near Xi'an that is vaguely interesting. Some nice old pottery, local farmer's art and strange depressions in the ground that we were told were actually the location of houses and ceremonial sites. There were also some graves containing skeletons from 4000 BCE. Cool. That was relatively painless. Our guide, Jia Jia was also a complete sweetie and made the whole thing almost fun.
Next was the Terracotta factory, where modern day Chinese workers churn out Terracotta warriors for people's shelves and gardens. They range from a couple of inches high to larger than life sized. This was slightly interesting. We were taught how the original figures were made, molds for the body, air drying of the Li mountain clay, kiln firing, hand smoothing and painting, and then the insertion of the separate head. The heads were made individually because each was unique, whereas the bodies are only in 4 types: officer, soldier, archer, horseman. All of this was good background info, but we were ready to go see the real thing. Then came the hard sell. We were led into the warehouse of warriors and lacquered furniture and let loose to hopefully be tempted into buying a keepsake at their inflated prices. They misjudged their targets. We are BACKPACKERS! We're cheap. Not one of us was likely to drop $2,000 US on a lacquered table, or $10,000 US on a larger-than-life-sized terracotta general.
Next on the agenda was lunch. This was when the revolt happened. Led by a likely fella from London, we collectively declined to go to lunch and requested immediate relocation to the Terracotta Army. Flushed with victory, we were quite happy during the one hour drive to the location. Until...we pulled into a hotel parking lot. Hmm, I could have sworn that the tour site didn't have a hotel. It turns out that 2 of our number had quietly indicated that they were hungry, and those 2 outvoted the remaining 8. That was a pitiful revolt. Most of us settled into our nice buffet like proper tourists. The Londoner and a man from Malta were hold-outs, eating their crisps in the lobby until we were done.
Finally, at 2pm, after hours and hours of being driven around and being force-fed both knowledge and lunch, we arrived at the site.
Wow! The army is certainly not up there with the Wall in terms of staggering works of mankind, but I think that #8 in the list is just about right. First, we watched a movie shown in a 9 screen 360 degree cinema. This was a full historical, costume adventure story of the first emperor of the Qin dynasty and his creation of the terracotta army. We were told that the reason he was so cruel was that he ate mercury to extend his life. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect along with the impairment of his mental faculties. Having been insane and cruel, possibly necessary qualities in a man who would conquer and unite the 6 states that became China, Qin Shihuang decided that he would need some back-up in the afterlife. Thus, the Army. It is unbelievable.
The figures were partially ruined and thoroughly smashed only 2 years after the emperor's death when General Xiang Yu led/participated in a peasant uprising that took out part of its aggression on the funerary arrangements of the emperor. It's interesting that Qin Shihuang had his people so terrorized that it took them 2 years to recover enough spirit to wreck his clay army. It's interesting that I never knew the army was found in pieces. All of what we see today has been painstakingly assembled by the shattered remains left behind after the rioters had finished. Also, originally the figures were painted. There is enough chemical residue to know that the faces were pink, the clothes blue and green and the arms were brown, but no visible paint survived the passing millenia. So cool!!!
I could enthuse some more, but I'm sure you get the point. It was quite nice. :)
After getting back (5ish), I agreed to meet Julie and Andrew (from Dublin) in the hostel lobby at 8 to go see the water and light show at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Even after showering and changing, that still left loads of time. I made the most of it by heading off to the Muslim Quarter. There's an area of Xi'an that has had a Chinese Muslim (Hui) population since the late 8th century. It contains a great mosque and numerous street food vendors. Seeing ethnic Chinese women wearing head scarves is very odd. Nothing wrong with it, just odd.
The street food was primarily meaty. I did have a delicious sticky rice hemisphere on a stick with fruit syrup, and then had to head back to the hostel to meet my Irish friends. We took the bus out to the Big Goose Pagoda; yes, there is in fact also a Little Wild Goose Pagoda, but not a medium-sized one. There, we dawdled, trying to get a picture of the pagoda at night. Tricky. I had to use my kids & pets setting with no flash and even then, it blurred. Suddenly, the show was starting and the pavilion was packed. We'd left it too late and without a display of incredibly adept shoving, there was no way we'd get the spot we'd intended to watch the show from. Instead, we went around the side.
Imagine a football field. Now divide it into sections. Each section is about 20' long and runs the width of the field. These areas are divided by a 4' wide strip on which people are crowded. Each section is filled with water jets, at the base of which are multicolored lights. At one end of the field, there is a massive main fountain area which is an extra 20 feet wide on either side. There are huge loudspeakers playing instrumental music, and looking over the whole extravaganza is a seven-story Buddhist temple dating to 652 CE and anecdotally linked to the religious merits of vegetarianism. Sidetrack: the story goes that a group of Buddhist monks ate meat regularly. Then, one day they couldn't find meat and so a monk said, "I hope the merciful Bodhisattva will give us some meat." At that moment, a wild goose flying by broke his wings and fell at the monk's feet. Now, a Christian would have taken that to be an answer to prayer and cooked that goose quicker than a wink. This group of monks instead decided that Bodhisattva was ordering them to be more pious. They started building a pagoda where the goose fell and they all stopped eating meat.
All in all, this was an event made to appeal to me. After hanging by the sidelines for a bit, I noticed that the center pedestrian strips were emptying out. Apparently, the locals didn't feel like getting splashed by the fountains. This was a Saturday night and everyone in the city seemed to be here, so finding that empty spot was miraculous. The three of us headed out and watched the remainder of the show from the midst of it. People, especially children and teenagers were daring each other to run through the fountains, trying to time it to avoid getting splashed. It was a giant party.
The party eventually ended and then I was off to Pizza Hut for dinner. Yes, I know. Pitiful. By now, though, it's a tradition. I visit a Pizza Hut in every country that I spend more than a few days in. It's my comfort food. It's the one thing I can count on to taste the same no matter where I happen to be. Also, I hadn't eaten since my forced buffet experience and was starving!
After gulping down my pizza, I went back home to change rooms (my new room was right above the bar, but I have earplugs), go to sleep and get ready for climbing one of China's five Taoist mountains, Hua Shan.
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