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It was nearing the end of Ann's trip and we only had one full day in X'ian... so of course there was only one place to go...... I'd read various blogs about the Terracotta Army before we got to X'ian - some raved about it whilst others thought it over-rated. Personally I thought it was astounding. Imagine you're an Emperor living some 2000 odd years ago and aware of your mortality your start building your tomb.... which you decide to have guarded by 8000ish life size terracotta soldiers and horses that will protect you in the afterlife.... each piece is unique and brightly painted and the whole lot is lined up in battle formations and buried in underground pits!! The Emperor in question was Qin Shi Huang, who ascended the throne at the age of 13 (in 246 BC), assumed full power at 22 (after dispatching of his regent), then went on to defeat his enemies and build the first centralised, united empire in the history of China. His other 'achievements' included linking the walls that had been built by previous dynasties... forming the forerunner to today's Great Wall. The mausoleum took 11 years to finish... and being the nice guy
Terracotta Army
... I never realised that the 'army' included horses...that he was (apparently he was a bit of a tyrant) he ordered that those who worked on it be buried alive in the tomb when he died so that it's secrets would remain secret. As it happened his son was a weak ruler and was quickly overthrown - the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang was subsequently forgotten until 1974 when is was rediscovered by a farmer digging a well - who I guess didn't quite find what he expected!!!! What you see today is the result of some substantial restoration - only one soldier has been found fully intact, the rest have been found in various sized pieces that have painstakingly been put back together. There are 3 pits to see - the first is the largest and contains the greatest number of warriors on show - some 6000 in total, comprised of crossbow bearers, and armoured soldiers that would have carried all manner of spears, daggers etc and which were accompanied by 35 horse drawn chariots - the chariots were made of wood so are long since gone, but the terracotta horses are still in place. The weapons carried by the soldiers were treated in such away
that they didn't rust and so even today are still sharp. The combination of facial expression, hair style, hand positions, armour and perhaps originally colour is unique for every warrior. Now the soldiers are all the same pinky-white colour but originally they all would have been painted bright colours, indeed a few on show still retain little bits of colour. Others with more colour are kept away from the public and damaging light in special conditions. Two other pits also exist, the last of which contains what is thought to be the 'command centre' of the army. It's also believed that more of the army may yet remain buried.....
We also visited the mosque in X'ian - being at the end of the Silk Road the city has a fair sized Muslim population. The mosque is in the middle of the Muslim quarter - walking through it and looking at all the meats and spices on display I started to get flashbacks to Borneo. I have to say that, having seen numerous mosques in Borneo this was the most un-mosque like mosque I've seen. There were none of the tall minarets and domes that I've come to expect. And
had it not been for the Arabic inscriptions you could easily be mistaken for thinking you were in a Chinese temple.
Having had a day of culture the next morning we hoped on the bus to Hua Shan, a 2160m granite peak a few hours east of X'ian that is one of China's sacred Taoist mountain areas. We got a bus easily enough...... but it didn't exactly stop in Hua Shan town... rather it stopped near the motorway exit lane... just long enough for us to hop off and slide our way down the embankment to a conveniently waiting taxi. There started an 'interesting' and somewhat stressful 'adventure' which eventually saw us getting to the start of the walk up the mountain. Of course the taxi driver didn't speak English but we thought we'd mimed enough to convey that we wanted to get to the start of the walk. Except that he of course calls his mate who does speak English and happens to own a hotel... the mate proceeds to try and convince me that walking today is a bad idea and that we should go tomorrow morning, after spending a night at his hotel. I said no
thank you and hung up, then we re-mimed to the driver about walking... which he either didn't understand or ignores because we end up at his mates hotel where we go through it all again. Aghhh. I was almost starting to loose my temper but we finally got to the ticket office.... except we were at the ticket office for the those that want to take the chair lift or the short steep 2hr climb... we wanted to do the 8km, 6hr epic that started from a different place.... and hence had a different ticket office. A lady finally appeared who spoke a little English and told the taxi driver where to drop us. After the usual price hassles (we agreed this, no you pay me more type conversations) we were dropped off and happily waved goodbye to our taxi driver. As we started walking round a temple and saw no sign of a ticket office we began to get a wee bit suspicious that our taxi driver had pulled a fast one and dumped us in the wrong place. We were about to give up when I spied a Chinese guy who looked like he was dressed for a
hike... he spoke only a little English but enough to get us to the unsignposted ticket office that was through the temple, out the other side and a few hundred metres up hill..... I guess not so many people walk up this way!!! By this time it must have been @ 3pm but it turned out to be a great time to be walking as there was some shade and a nice cool breeze... coming down the next morning it was sooo hot. The other advantage was that whilst we saw some people coming down and of course the ubiquitous refreshment stand people that I was v thankful to (cause it meant I didn't have to lug loads of water up with me) the Chinese guy was about the only other person we saw for the first 4 hours!
Walking up was easy in the sense that it was nice stone steps all the way so there was no trying to get up steep slippery slopes. The not so easy part was, well, because it was steps up all the way after the first few hours it started to get rather tedious and painful on the knees. The views
Hua Shan
View from the bottom.... where we laughed about how of course that wasn't the peak we were climbing... ha ha, joke was so on us ;0) were astounding though, once you got through the smoggy layer ;0) We joked how from the road you couldn't see the mountain... and from the mountain you couldn't see down to where the road should be! The path followed a river for the first part and then passed a few small temples. 4 hours of up later got us to the top of North Peak, from which it was another few hours of steps up to East Peak. On the last stretch, having just climbed a nice vertical ladder we sat and watched sunset from the top. Ahhhhh
Next morning it was up at something like 5am ish for sunrise. We found a nice quiet spot away from the clouds and waited... and waited.... and waited... and waited..... I think it was about 6.30 before we finally saw the sun rise up over the smog!! It was a nice wait though - watching the sky turn lighter shades of blue and slowly being able to work out more details of the mountains.
We'd met a couple of Dutch boys at the hostel and after sunrise Ann went off to be adventurous with them... being suspended from a wee
rope half way up a cliff face... I stood at the top and watched ;0) We took the cable car back down to the base of the mountain - great views but I was glad we'd done the longer walk yesterday - it had been hard work but was so peaceful. The short steep two hour walk went right under the cable car..... noisy and your views would have been somewhat ruined by the cable car overhead. Back at the bottom I really wasn't looking forward to standing on the side of the motorway trying to hail down a passing bus. Fortunately the taxi driver had a mate, who had a bus that happened to be leaving soonish.... from a random kerbside in town....
For Ann's last night we took a bus over to the Big Goose Pagoda. We weren't going in, it was too late for that, but the Dutch guys we'd met at Hua Shan (who were living in X'ian) told us that each night at 8pm there's a musical water fountain and laser show just outside the pagoda. And I have to say it's one of the best free things I've been to in China. We
were the only westerners that I saw there but there were hundreds of Chinese - some families, some friends, some young couples on dates, people were running in and out of the fountains as they went off. Soo much fun to watch!!
The next day Ann left me to go back to Blighty... and work. Ha ha ha. ;0) That was a month ago now - I've done lots since and am now into my last few weeks in China. :0( I'm actually quite looking forward to the idea of a new country, but that's another story. Next up... panda pandemonium.
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