Would you build your army out of terracotta? - Xi'an

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After a brief stop in Pingyao to visit a small Ming walled town we were on the sleeper trains again to Xi'an. We shared a compartment with two students (Xi'an has a large student population, I figured it only had a large number of terracotta soldiers) determined to brush up their English skills (at this point I'm not too happy to say they likened me to one of the Backstreet Boys! Gutted) and also allowed us to at least attempt (pathetically) some more Chinese phrases.

Arriving in Xi'an we dropped the bags off at the local 'international' youth hostel; international my arse, more like a licence to guarantee poor standards (there are so many good privately run guesthouses in China I'm adamant I won't step foot in one again!) and headed up to the Terracotta Army. Now I won't bore with this too much, basically Emperor Qin killed so many enemies in his quest to unite the states of China he decided that he better have one beefed up clay army to defend him in the afterlife (go figure). Just to compound matters the crazy Emperor had every person who helped to create his new army executed and hence no records ever existed until a peasant digging a well stumbled upon them in the 70's (ok, maybe I did go on a bit!) The excavated chambers are impressive, especially the 'Southern' chamber (yes beware we have our own army for the afterlife, so you better be nice to me in this one!) it's pretty difficult to get a good view because you literally have to fight all the Chinese tour groups out of the way. You leave more not being impressed by what is on show, but by what is still to be excavated. Qin's body lies 2k's away, from the excavated sights and it's all supposed to be guarded by further armies, rivers of mercury and boobie traps (or maybe I'm getting confused with Indiana Jones!)

Xi'an itself is a really cool city, obviously apart from the hostel, all set within the old city walls, shopping is every bit as good as Bond St (Gucci, Prada et al) and the evening really comes alive with loads of crazy Chinese doing mass group dances that cross between authentic Chinese dancing with a bit of banging techno in for measure.

Alas we leave Xi'an for another sleeper train for the city of Chengdu as Elaine's already getting excited about seeing the Giant Panda's in their reserve down there!

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