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Published: November 3rd 2005
Sleeping
The tran ride was 12 hours long. I will have bed head in the rest of the pictures.This entry is dedicated to Suzanne (the boss lady/supervisor/awesome friend). Suzanne told me that I had to do her a favor when I go to China and that is to visit the Terracotta warriors which is based in Xi’an. She inspired me to go!
I went with my roommates, Trey and Jenny, and a translator, Anita. We took a train Friday night and arrived in Xi’an the next morning. The train ride was a sleeper and it was a 12 hour ride. Right when we got off the train, the tour started. The tour ended on Sunday evening. We took a train back to Beijing (another 12 hour ride). Right when we got off the train we had to go straight to our 8 o’clock morning class. The tour was a lot of fun and here are the following places we went to: Qin Emperor Museum, Hua Xin Chi, The Forest of Steles, The Eastern City Wall, and the Pagoda Temple. You know, out of all the places I’ve been in China, I have to say people of Xi’an look the best. They more lighter tone skin and their dialect is a lot softer than Beijing. Beijing is like the
St. Louis of the States. They like to turn words into “er” sounds…like We’re havin fun over HUR…What’s over thur. It’s a bit annoying and barbaric sounding.
Qin Emperor Museum:
Qin Emperor was the one to start the building of the Great Wall and also the one to unify the country under one written language. Although the Chinese have more than a thousand dialects, everyone read the same written language. This emperor was one powerful and amazing emperor. He built his memorial before died. He basically built a whole city for his afterlife. No one knew where his burial site was hidden because the people the built his burial were killed. After the killing of the builders, the killers were killed too afterwards. There are legends that say he is buried under a large mountain. In the mountain, there is an underground river that surrounds his tomb. Surrounding this mountain is a large city with a city wall. Protecting the burial site are thousands of warriors. Well the legend was uncovered when three farmers were digging in this rural area and found a terracotta warrior. Once this of discovered, they found more terracotta warriors. The terracotta warriors were the
Burial ceremony
They performed a reenactment of the burial ceremony. They're doing this warriors that were suppose to protect the emperor’s burial site. The thing is that the warriors are about 10 miles away from the supposed burial site. That means that there’s more underground, possibly an underground city leading to the burial site. They have not uncovered everything because they fear that they do not have the technology to preserve the historical treasures. That’s why all the warriors are not dug up.
Terracotta Warriors:
I finally got to see the Terracotta Warrior pit. It’s an amazing site to see because there’s so many larger than life size statues lined up. The statues are not really life size. Them Chinese people were short….hahaha. So the emperor ordered the statues to be about a foot taller. The statues were originally painted but over the long years the paint was deteriorated.
Hua Xin Chi:
This was a get away for one of the emperors. From what I heard, a lot of romance stories take place here. It is said that the Hua Xin Chi was ordered to be built by one the emperors for his favorite concubine (hahaha). It’s actually a very nice place. It has many gardens and ponds. The main attraction
is that the place has several bathhouses and pools. All the water is from a natural hot spring…nice and steamy!
Eastern City Wall:
During this tour, I learned a bit about Feng Shui. The Chinese like to use Feng Shui to decorate there surroundings to keep a “central balance”(not really sure what that means). Well, Xi’an supposedly has bad Feng Shui because the shape of Xi’an on a map looks like the character “Prisoner”. Therefore, all around the City Wall, they put flags of dragons to fend off the bad Feng Shui.
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Lea
non-member comment
WOW!
Beautiful pictures! After reading your blogs, I am so ready to visit China! Hope you are well. Lea