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Box Tower
Traffic leading up to the Tower in the centre of Xian I went to Xian (pronounced She-Ann) with Em and her parents, Cheryl and Doug. I was a day behind them though, my flight being delayed because of a passport issue - but when I did eventually get on a flight it was worth it: the flight is uneventful with flat landscapes until you get near to Xian where this is this amazing mountain range outside the city - at one point it felt like I was about 300m from a mountain peak as we descended.
It also takes about 10 min to fly over the city itself it is so vast, with a population of about 10m and, given the amount of development we saw across the city, it is growing fast. It was the capital of China and one of the biggest cities in the world for a long time and it seems from the number of cranes around they are looking to get back to this status!
The main reason to visit Xian is to see the nearby Terracotta Warriors, but in fact I found that the city itself was also impressive and very interesting.
The heart of the city is this large tower known as
the Bell Tower which is an impressive old pagoda like structure.
The city centre is also surrounded by an ancient wall, similar (but much more bigger in every sense) to Quebec City in Canada. We went to the wall the first evening I was there and walked from the south tower round to the east tower - unfortunately it was too late to walk the whole wall but what we did see was pretty impressive.
Traffic and life in general is very busy in Xian, it is a very bustling city and actually feels like it is busier than Shanghai. Crossing the road or getting a taxi are both problematic tasks as we quickly discovered! The city is probably a combination of the modern, tall buildingsof Shanghai with the historical and traditional aspects of Beijing which is why I liked it so much.
Unfortunately the first night there we left it too late to find some good Chinese cuisine so, after a walk around the city finding everywhere to be closed, we were forced to eat at the hotel. They didnt have any new Chinese beers to try so Sinjiang Black remains my favourite...
We did
Xian Wall at night
You can see the mix of old and new China get to an interesting square on our walk, called Peoples Square (like in Shanghai) but full of people rollerskating! We also saw some people doing a late night dance class on the street which seems to be common in China (outside of Shanghai at least - but Shanghai isnt real China).
The next day I went to see the Terracotta Warriors with Cheryl (they had all gone the day I wasnt there but Cheryl wanted to see them again!).
The first noticeable thing about where they are located is that it is in an amazing valley beside the mountains - kind of like the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. We passed a university campus which has the mountains in its back yard and looked amazing - probably one of the nicest campuses in the world Id guess.
When we arrived at the Warriors we watched a short (and dramatically performed!) video about the Warriors and the site. Basically Emperor Qin, who united the country as 'China' thousands of years ago so is basically the first emperor of a unified China, decided that he needed an army to protect him after his death. So he arranged for
Terracotta Tomb Setting
Panorama of the view at the tombs thousands of workers to build these clay statues for this purpose.
Although the people who made them were slaves, they had an incentive to do a good job as if they did they would be buried alive (as opposed to having their heads chopped off if they did bad job)!
The site was only discovered in the last thirty years so is basically still an excavation site - it will be decades before it is all excavated and the site reassembled as much as possible.
Also after Qin died there was a peasants uprising (no surprise as during his reign he also had the Great Wall built - so half of China was probably working as his slaves) and the tombs were looted and set on fire.
Despite all this, what is there and what they have managed to excavate and reassemble is impressive. They believe there are over 6000 warrior statues there.
The main pit which has a large number of reassembled and excavated statues is very impressive - the detail that went into each statue that you can see is amazing, for example each one has a unique face (the workers made statues
of each other), unique hair and even the soles of the feet are unique. They are also full size and there are statues of horses and other army attire too - for example you could tell the ranking of each warrior by the armour and hat they had.
We got the audio guide there but it wasnt particularly useful. I think just being there to see the warriors doesnt really need audio. Of course, this being China, it was pretty busy with Chinese tourists but not too crazy.
Sadly my visit to Xian was just the one full day and we flew back to Shanghai in the evening. It was a shame as I really liked Xian and the surrounding area but as is always the case with travelling too much to see, too little time.
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