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So we left Guangzhou by plane, arrived late afternoon and checked into our hostel. We went for a wander around Xi’an, got some supplies and then headed back to the hostel for some pizza for dinner. After our free beer, well Brett’s two free beers, we played cards with a couple of people from France who were travelling for twelve months – how jealous was I. Then it was time for bed, we needed to be fit and awake for the Terracotta Warriors the next day!
So we decided to go on a tour put on by our hostel to the Terracotta Warriors. We were picked up from the hostel and then taken out to the tomb. So for those of you who don’t know much about the Terracotta Warriors, I’ll try and explain a little about what I know about them. The tomb is of Qin the First Emperor of China and basically he had a huge terracotta army made so he would be as powerful (ie the Emperor) in the afterlife. They were discovered about 30 years ago by some farmers digging a well and since then the Chinese government and archeologists have been uncovering the army. There
are lots of pits surrounding the tomb in an area of about 52 square km’s and most have yet to the uncovered. When they uncover the pits all of the warriors are in pieces and they have had to stick them all back together, which is obviously hard work, in pit one they have found 6000 warriors and have reconstructed 2000 of them so far. They have found four types of warriors (general, archer, soldier and officers) all of which are about 6 feet tall each with different facial features and hairstyles from the four pits they have dug up, however they haven’t yet uncovered the Emperors Tomb itself as there are high levels of mercury and I think there is some discussion as to whether they should uncover it at all….Anyway I was very excited and lots of pictures were taken. Our guide took us through the pits in reverse order, leaving the biggest, most impressive pit till last! After the tour of the pits, we went to see the hill where the Emperors Tomb is and then lunch. We went back to the hostel and wandered out to get something to eat for dinner. Sesame noodles for me
and a pork roll for Brettie and then a mango smoothie for desert back at the hostel and then bed!
So the next day we wandered Xi’an. We walked to the Small Wild Goose Pagoda and walked up it. The higher that we climbed the smaller the rooms and stairs became….had some sesame noodles and pork roll for lunch and then walked to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is apparently where the Monkey Magic story ended when the monk brought back the scripts to this pagoda so they could be deciphered. We then decided to take a taxi back home and then for some silly reason we decided to cycle around the city walls, well actually on top of them….14 km’s later on a tandem bike (yes Brett, you did do most of the cycling) and we were pretty exhausted. Time for pizza for dinner and then a game involving chopsticks and marbles, which we both sucked at. After a few beers with people we had met playing the game we went to bed.
Our last full day in Xi’an and we decided to go out to another Emperors Tomb, Jingdi. We wandered
around the tomb, looking at the way he had prepared himself for the afterlife, not to the scale of Emperor Qin, but still pretty amazing. Then we headed back into town. We decided to head to the Muslim Quarter for lunch. Brett had a noodle/bread/mutton soup, I’m only telling you this because Brett kept going on about how delicious it was….We then had a peanut sweet and then headed to the mosque to have a look around, it was very peaceful there considering you were in the middle of town. We then headed back to the hostel via the drum tower/bell tower. I had some dinner and more beers with people we had met, we talked about previous jobs we used to do and glad that we weren’t doing them anymore…..then bed!
Our last day in Xi’an and again we didn’t want to leave. Had some breakfast before we went to catch the bus to the airport. Walked to bus stand only to find out that there is no way that we were getting on the bus….too busy….so we caught a taxi to the airport with some other people….Waiting in line at the check in counter and my bag
was kicked by the lady behind me, clearly I was being too slow in moving it, how rude of me….checked in and we were on our way to Beijing!
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