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Published: October 24th 2007
The Journey begins
Aboard our train to Xian.We secured our train tickets to Xian the morning of its departure (Tues 16/Oct) but were unable to get sleepers at this late stage - a hard seat 66Y=$10. It was surprisingly easy to get the tickets, & then later on, to get the train from this very modern looking station of Yichang. We hadn't much time to look around Yichang, but it was more time then we had planned. It struck us a rather liveable city with many new looking facilities and infrastructure in place. Its close proximity to the tourist site, the Three Gorges Dam, probably meant a lot of investment was forthcoming. Yichang has a population of 3.9mill & sits at an elevation of 134m.
The train journey was 17hrs starting at 3.20pm & arriving 7.30ish the next morning. The seats we had were called hard seats & they were well named. The width of the train had 3 seats, aisle, 2 more seats with rows of seats facing each other. Our train seemed to have a low priority as we seemed to have to wait many, many times for other trains from the other direction to pass before we could proceed - thus making this a much
Our Hotel View
We stayed at the Bell Tower Youth Hostel inside the old walls of the city & had this winning view from our window. longer trip than it could have been. Our carriage was pretty full to start with & the locals we sat with were mostly amiable sorts but your bum can only take so much punishment & you would have to get up to stretch your legs & sort out the numb bum. Marg was actually doing OK, she'd had a cold tablet as the train started & seemed comatose much of the time - not suffering the discomforts of Sue & I.
After 8hrs of travel we were alerted by a pommie couple that there may be some hard sleepers available if you approach a certain official a carriage or two down. Marg & I did just that & scored top bunk sleepers for an extra 44Y=$7 & I set about moving our gear the 4 or 5 carriages down to our new digs. At this point Sue thought she'd give it a go as well but she missed out & had to do the entire innings on the hard seat - a medal worthy performance. The early arrival in Xian allowed us to get settled & still have a good chunk of the day available. We went straight to the
The Drum Tower
The other significant tower in the city centre. How 's the sponsorship labelling? Bell Tower Youth Hostel & got a double room for 180Y=$28 per night. This was centrally located and well used to catering to westerners - a nice change from our point of view.
Xian is a city of 3.3mill people at an elevation of 1352m and quite a sophisticated looking city indeed. It is situated in central China, between the Weihe river in the north and the Qinling Mountains in the south. It probably possesses more items of archaeological interest than any other town or city in China, the most important, of course, being the world-famous Terracotta Warriors. During the Tang era (618-907) what is now Xi'an formed a part of Chang'an, which at that time was 37km in circumference and had a population of a million or so.
We had only two major tourist tasks to perform - checking out the old city walls & visiting the terracotta warriors, so decided to do the former on this first day in Xian. After the establishment of the Ming dynasty, the wall, built initially during the old Tang dynasty (618 -907), was extended and fortified creating the modern Xian City Wall. It's the most complete city wall that has survived in
Souvenir anyone?
These multiple sets of kites were all the rage amongst many of the itinerant sales people. China. After the extension, the wall now stands 12m tall, 12m wide at the top and 15-18m thick at the bottom. It covers 14km in length & still has much of the deep moat that used to surround it.
Once up on this high wall, there is not a great deal to see other than the gates that pop up every so often but there are cart, bicycle & rickshaw hire all available up here. We went for the bicycle option with Marg & I going tandem & Sue going solo. The 14km cycle wasn't too bad but some bad cobblestoning meant some bumpy rides along the way. We'd stop now & again to peer over the wall & then off we'd go again. For much off the 14km there were no other locals, just foreign tourists doing the bike thing.
Another very interesting feature of the city centre was the Muslim quarter where many market stalls & shops are decked out in all sorts of colour to sell their 'cooked on the spot' foods, dried fruits, souvenirs, etc. It was a great area to walk especially when all lit up at night. We had a very fine meal down
Marg in Xian
Here's Marg outside the Bell Tower. here of meat skewers & vegies on one of our walks.
On Thurs 18/Oct we breakfasted at our hotel & then made our way out to see the Terracotta Warriors. We had got the low down from our hotel on how to do this on public transport & found it reasonably easy to achieve. We caught a bus to the train station (1Y=15c each) taking ~15min & another to the Warriors (7Y=$1 each) taking ~50min. Again, en route, it was very evident much money is being spent on infrastructure & in particular road construction. China just seems to have so much money for this sort of investment.
We arrived at this very popular tourist destination (2 million visitors last year) & alighted toward the end of a very big bus parking area & made our way all the others were heading to the entry gates. We were accosted by an English speaking local, a government site guide, who offered her services for 100Y=$15 for our group of three. We then bought our entry tickets, 90Y=$14 each, went through a security screen and were in.
The Terracotta Warriors are 2200 years old and were an army designed to protect the first
City Walls
Marg & I hired a tandem bicycle to ride the 14km distance around the old city walls. emporer, Qin Shi Huang, in his afterlife - they were aligned in battle formation a short distance (1.5km) from this emperor's underground, afterlife, palace. (This palace is not yet excavated & not open to the public.) The warriors were discovered in 1974 by several farmers who were digging a well amid their fields when they pulled out pieces of material they realised were probably very significant. They took some of these fragments to a museum & a couple of months later excavations started at this site.
The site is both a very busy tourist site & an active dig - the three major pits found here are enclosed in hangar-like facilities with a lawned buffer zone around the paved surrounds, a museum, souvenir shops, etc, a very slick operation. Our guide took us through the museum & info video before we got to the dig pits - she was saving the best for last? - but the first viewing of the warriors in the massive Pit 1 is breath-taking. Pit 1 is the largest (230m x 62m) with several thousand figures so far uncovered, Pit 2 is smaller & L-shaped (longest dimensions 124m x 98m), & Pit 3 smallest, "U"
Xian city wall
How's this for an award-winning photo (thanks Marg) shaped (dimensions 120m x 25m). Each of the pits have big areas yet to be uncovered with more research & expertise required before they are attempted. This is likely to take many more years (decades) to be fully excavated. I was surprised to hear that the vast majority of the figures were greatly damaged, virtually just rubble in many cases, with only one figure so far, a kneeling archer, found entirely intact. Piecing together the various bits can take up to 3 years a figure!
The warriors were made in three pieces each - solid legs & head but a hollow body - and assembled in open trenches in battle formation. They were fully painted, though nearly all colours have been lost, each with his own unique face, perhaps modelled on the real soldiers of the time. They carried contemporary, real, weapons of the time. A roof of timber beams & mesh then supported the earth deposited on top of them to bury them to a depth of 5-7m. The Emporer, who was quite a ruthless man, died before this project was totally completed. Within a year of his death a peasant uprising broke into these pits & set fire
Security check
Security was pretty tight at the site of the Terracotta Warriors. to supporting beams & whatever, with the mass of overburden collapsing down onto the Warriors & smashing them to pieces. This was a great thing to see & I guess it will get better & better as more & more things are uncovered with improved technologies employed.
Our return trip to Xian city was just a reversal of our way out except this trip back was a different route, through some less polished parts of the country. We had an afternoon & evening to stroll around as we were flying to Lhasa, Tibet on a lunchtime flight the next day. I haven't written much detail of meals we've eaten on our tour but thought I needed to make a special mention of the Peking Duck we had this night in the Chinese area. I had not had this meal before: the duck came in sliced up portions for you to arrange on your pancake with the hoisin(?) sauce and sprouts were just so good - I'll long remember this meal.
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