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Published: February 9th 2008
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We arrived at Xi'an train station early in the morning. We were met at the station by people from the hostel we were staying at, the Lu Dao. This place doubles as a hotel with the top floor used for the hostel. The Lonely Planet had raved about the place, saying the manager was well in with the PSB, the people who you have to get the Tibet visa off. So first thing we approached the manager and were given a flat "no" on the Tibet visa, that the borders were closed. News to us, but we let it slide, so next we asked about the free train ticket collection service they provided, this time we were pointed to the train station and told to get them ourselves.
A bit taken aback we went for a spot of breakfast. While we eating we were approached by a man offering to help us with our Tibet permit. For a measly 1800Y he could get us in and organise everything. We took his card and said we'd call him back. The hostel was starting to get on my wick and we were only here an hour.
So we went down to
the train station to book our tickets to Chengdu. There was one English speaking booth. We thought we'd chance our arm and ask for tickets to Lhasa. We'd heard that some people had had some success this way chancing their arms. The girl who had little or no English just smacked this piece of card up to the glass which stated quite categorically that we had no business booking tickets without a permit. I was half expecting alarms to start going off and the shutters to come down. So we took this on board and just booked the tickets to Chengdu.
The main reason for stopping here in the Terracotta Warriors. You get inundated with offers for tours but none of this is necessary. There is a public bus leaving from the train station every few minutes and it services every major tourist stop along the way . We went down there early the next morning and loaded up.
When we arrived there it emerged that one of the three exhibits was closed for restoration, it was a bit of a bummer but what we did see was serious! We got to look at about 1200 of these
warriors that had been meticulously restored piece by piece. The chamber had collapsed in a fire and destroyed many of them. Each warrior has a different facial expression, which when you consider that there were originally over 8000 of these it was a massive undertaking. There was archers, cavalry, and horses and carriage and each one individually painted, awesome place! It is thought that over 700,000 workers and craftsmen worked on it for about 40 years. The chamber was built around 250 BC by Qin Shi Huangdi, the Emperor credited with unifying China. It was to serve as his tomb and their purpose was to help rule another empire with Shi Huangdi in the afterlife.
The tomb was ransacked and burned in an uprising not long after the Emperor died. Many of the weapons were stolen and in the ensuing fire it caved in trapping the warriors. The compound lay dormant then until the 1970's. Some farmers digging a well started pulling up some big lumps of terracotta with unusual designs and alerted the authorities. The rest as the say is history.
A story we heard is that the land was acquired of the farmers by the government
and that the farmers never got a penny. They were signing autographs at the site the day we were there. On the way out we bought some postcards and one of them had a picture of the 4 men who discovered the site. Funny thing was that they weren't the same guys who were signing the autographs!
As we were leaving one of the exhibits Lucia overheard an American lady talking to her guide. She heard tell the guide that it was unfortunate that they didn't give the horses different facial expression like they did with the warriors!!!
After the exhibits we were treated to a cinema show. The room had screens all around and the people stood in the middle. The show went on for about 45 minutes and was a historical lesson about how the Terracotta Warriors came about with reenactments of battles and the construction of the tomb. Interesting stuff enough.
When we got back to Xi'an we went out to meet some people who we'd met in Mongolia and we'd a good nights craic in one of the hostel bars in the city centre.
On our last day there we decided to
potter around Xi'an itself. It is a pleasant enough city. Its another walled city but on a much larger scale than Pingyao. There is plenty of shopping streets and we also had a look around the bell and drum tower and some more pagoda's. In the afternoon we visited the history museum, which was quite interesting. Xi'an has a massive Muslim quarter and we went down there to have a look and sample some of the food.
We loaded onto the night train to Chengdu that evening after a few nice days in Xi'an. The warriors were obviously the highlight but Xi'an itself was a nice place to visit.
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