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Published: November 6th 2010
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Another dream came true today - the Terracotta Warriors! Again words can't describe the sheer enormity of the treasures that have been unearthed here.
The first Terracotta Warrior was discovered by four farmers in 1974 who were digging a well on their farmland. They discovered fragments of artifacts which was reported to the officials and the rest is history and the Eighth wonder of the world.
Emperor Qin ruled for 37 years and squashed a lot of rebellions and tried to unify the differing regions (often by brute force). He finally succeeded but wasn't very popular. Shortly after becoming emperor in his own right at the age of 22 he ordered the construction of his tomb. It took 38 years and over 700 000 workers to construct the vast tomb. Life sized terracotta warriors of different ranks were constructed to guard the Emperors tomb, some of which have been painstakingly uncovered today. Designers and many workers were actually buried within the large expanse of the tomb and surrounding areas so that they couldn't tell others the secrets of the tomb.
We saw three pits - the first pit is where most of the uncovered warriors are found. It
is truly amazing and the enormity of what has been found and what is still hidden is amazing. Row after row of life sized warriors have been unearthed many of which are in poor condition (after the emperor's death there was a peasant uprising and many of the warriors were destroyed or set on fire. The brass weapons held by warriors have long since been stolen ). Each warrior has been painstakinly cleared from the clay and pieces put back together. It is amazing but each warrior has unique features. Some warriors are tagged, removed from the pit, restored and then put back where they were taken from. Pit number two is still very much untouched - they have uncovered some of the warriors but there are still numerous layers of clay they need to get through to find more treasures. Pit number 3 has a smaller number of warriors, in various stages of renovation. They have found the emperors tomb buried 50 metres underground but are waiting for technology to advance so that they can preserve as much as possible. That will one day be an amazing thing to see. They have also found some brass sculptures of horses
and chariots near the emperors tomb - these have been restored and are also on display. What I saw today will remain in my memory for a very long time!
We then travelled to the 600 year old Xian city wall - this is one of the best preserved full city wall in China as many have been destroyed over the years. The city wall is about 14 km around and has four entrances into the inner city (north, south, east and west). The city wall is surrounded by a moat. Unfortunately it was pretty misty so visibility was low but you could imagine that in its heyday it would have been an unpenatratable fortress.
I probably won't have internet access for the next few days as we travel to Wuhan to begin our 4 night Yangtse River cruise - I will post again as soon as possible but I will continue to take heaps of photo's and have a great time!
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