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I think it's fair to say that the most famous thing about Xi'an is the Terracotta Army, certainly, it seemed to be the attraction that most people we met there were interested in seeing.
In case you can't be bothered to google it and you want the most basic of facts given to you by a cretin like me, they were discovered by accident by a farmer in 1974. They were made during the Qin Dynasty during the reign of Emperor ShiHuangDi apparently because for the afterlife he wanted an army to fight with him and to protect him, his possessions and the three thousand concubines (women, not hedgehogs) that he had buried with him in a Mercury filled, man-made mountain about one mile from the site of the warriors. The guide we had described them as being the Eighth Wonder of the World, but I'm going to guess that's not objective fact and given that six of the actual seven don't exist anymore it's probably going to be difficult to make a proper comparison.
There are three pits currently on display, although a fourth one has been discovered and the general assumption seemed to be that there were
plenty more waiting to be found. The theory being that if the Emperor did want to be protected in the afterlife, it would make sense to completely surround his final resting place with these soldiers rather than just having eight thousand of them scratching their arses, a mile down the road. Of course, there you're introducing logic into madness but even to someone who drank Mercury like I drink water it must have occurred to him that the protection these guys offered was limited at best.
The three pits vary considerably in size. Pit one is comfortably the biggest, and is where many of the most famous photos of the warriors are taken. This pit is where much of the reconstruction is taking place (because almost all of the warriors were broken or smashed underground due to earthquakes or just the pressure of the layers of soil on top of them) and it is genuinely breathtaking the first time you walk in and see the rows of soldiers, still in the pit, reconstructed and lined up. The pit itself is about one and a half times the size of a football pitch and from the looks of it there
were still plenty of parts that were being excavated and worked on. This was the main one, where the bulk of the soldiers were stationed, with considerably less in pit two and less still in pit three which was made to be a battle centre headquarters type place. So while the Emperor may have been mad, give him his due, he did put a fair bit of thought into it.
Of course as with many things that are that striking and beautiful to us in the modern world, there is a fairly grisly history behind it. The Emperor wanted all of the faces of the soldiers to be individual and different - which they are by the way. I thought it was like when people say that no two snowflakes are the same but it's actually true - and so many of the slaves and workers made these in their own image. After doing this however, to preserve the secret of the army, they were killed. Many of the bodies were buried with the army, a lot in quite a hurried fashion after the sudden death of the Emperor in 210BC. This was made clear in pit two when
you could see two bones that looked very much like they might once have belonged to a human, encased in the stone down in the trench. Obviously, this wasn't a pleasant sight, largely, I think because you're always happier in the ignorance of not knowing or just trying to to block out the horrible reality of these things while you look at the amazing thing infront of you. No one wants to go to the Pyramids, for example, and see the bodies of the slaves who died building them. We might know the history but as bad as it sounds, you don't want to let the horror of those things impact on your enjoyment of what was produced. The Chinese attitude was made clear perfectly here because no more than three feet away from these two bones there was an empty, dis-guarded, scrunched up bottle of water that had obviously been left by a worker or been thrown down on to this ancient and priceless site by a visitor who presumably thought that the distance between him and the pit meant that it was acceptable to use it as a bin.
They were found by a farmer when he
was digging a water well on his land one day. He has his own little part of the gift shop where he turns up occasionally to much excitement, and signs books for people, but perhaps understandably he has the jaded look of someone who has been doing it for the thick end of forty years when all he really wanted was to be a farmer. There were photos around of various dignitaries he'd met including Bill Clinton and family, but for riff-raff like us there was a strict 'no photos' rule, which was being enforced by a couple of scary looking security types who flanked him for the duration of the time we were there - far more effective than eight thousand soldiers stationed a mile away if you ask me.
Pura Vida
Dave
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