The Mausoleum

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We made our way through one of the most infamous mausoleums in history today; the tombs of the Terracotta Warriors.
Surprisingly, it's not the spine-chilling experience I had expected it to be. It was certainly impressive, but I wasn't met with the full impression I had expected of how many people were basically slaughtered or buried alive in the finishing of the tombs. Of course, the sheer volume of immaculately sculpted warriors in the tomb is enough to make one's head spin, but I didn't feel the weight of the lives lost in the space the way I thought I might; the life of the emperor ended, yes, but so did the lives of all his wives and concubines who did not bear sons, all of the architects, and a great deal of animals the emperor felt were "necessary" to his afterlife, and so the spaces the warriors inhabit are more their burial ground than that of anyone else.
The site was somewhat less majestic that we all thought it would be, I think. I don't know that anyone was unhappy we visited, not at all, but I think there was some wonder as to why we spent quite so long at the site. Many of us were under the impression that there were warriors everywhere in the complex, but in fact there are only a substantial number in the first space, and hardly any in the other two. Evidently, archaeologists have uncovered many artifacts and identified many particular spaces within the tombs as offices or rooms with purpose, but the artifacts appear to have all been relocated to cases or displays, and that essentially leaves big, room shaped holes in the ground which people may now look into and wonder, "what am I looking at, exactly?"
Please don't misunderstand, we were all very happy we went, and a lot of us still felt the impression of the mausoleum, but perhaps it was that our expectations had been raised by our pasts, and so when we finally got there, it was like expecting one particular toy on Christmas morning as a child and getting everything but. You're not disappointed by the gifts, not in the slightest, but the fact that the one is missing kind of throws everything off.
Another little bit of the day that threw me off a bit was the pelts hanging all over the stalls outside of the complex. At first, you look at them and think to yourself, "my, that's a small, colorful wolf." It's not a wolf, and contrary to my initial impression, it's not always a German Shepard, either. Most were a certain breed of dog I'm not familiar with, it has the black and orange color of a rottweiler tinged with white, is about the size of a St. Bernard (which is apparently also for sale), and hair a little shorter than a golden retriever. If you're ever in Xi'an and need a reference, there's a billboard with a picture of the dogs, alive and well, a short distance away from the complex. Maybe I'm just a little too sensitive to the issue, but I was honestly upset by the presence of the skins hanging about, it just wasn't something I felt comfortable seeing.
At any rate, we left the complex and went to a large history museum with many different wings and quite an impressive gift shop. We spent about an hour wandering around, learning about various phases of Chinese history ranging back about 3,500 years to the first noted civilizations of china.

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