Xian, China

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Xian

Most people seem to arrive in Xian, see the Warriors and then make a sharp exit. On arrival in the city it's easy to see why. It's so polluted that it's hard to see the buildings - not that that's necessarily a bad thing! But with more than a day to spare we decided to do a little exploring anyway and headed for the Drum and Bell Tower. Along with the wall surrounding the old city these buildings are all that’s left that offer a glimpse of this ex capital city's once royal and powerful past. Although even the view of the landmark Drum Tower is somewhat compromised by a huge neon McDonald’s advertisement!

After hearing rave reviews about the kebabs, clothes and souvenirs available we made our way to the Muslim quarter for a nosey. We only made it as far as the food stalls, lines of barbecues selling delicious unknown meats served on skewers and spicy garlic Nan bread. They tasted so good - they were only small so one wasn't enough and somehow we ended up on a kebab crawl!

Terracotta Army

Up bright and early and feeling the effects of 3 kebabs too many we headed for the bus station, and the inevitable group of local touts lying in wait for tourist prey. We managed to avoid these, attempting to charge a hefty 250 Yuan for a tourist bus. Instead we hopped onto the local bus (number 308 outside the train station) for 50 Yuan (3GBP) which took us the whole 50km and straight to the gates.

Growing up, I always thought of terracotta as a garden material, and the Terracotta Army conjured up images in my head of a lot of angry plant pots. The Terracotta Army of thousands of pottery soldiers were buried next to the mausoleum of the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. He spent most of his reign sending out armies to the four corners of China and succeeded in unifying the country for the first time. He also spent massive amounts of money preparing his tomb long before his death - Qin Shi Huang wanted to continue his reign in heaven, so logically he needed an army to conquer it! (Although other explanations said that the army would protect his tomb on earth!).

Contrary to what we'd been told, they're not all the same. In some cases, when you can avoid the Japanese tour groups, it's possible to get close enough to distinguish the individual features on some of the 8,000 plus warrior’s faces. It’s just a shame that the Warriors don't have their weapons anymore. Apparently they're mostly in good condition but are locked away, unavailable for the tourist eye.

It's difficult to get across the scale of the place from the photographs and the pits are still in the process of being excavated. Archeologists expect that there are tens of thousands more warriors buried in the region. Unfortunately, due to a peasant uprising shortly after Qin Shi Huang's death, some of the warriors were burned and destroyed, and the process now is like one unbelievably massive and complex jigsaw puzzle where you never know if you have all the pieces.

As with all the other sites we've visited, the Warriors are not free from tourist tat and the hawkers are ready to flog you an array of terracotta merchandise. If the hawkers had there way we would have left Xian with our own little terracotta army ready to take over Heaven!

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