Terra Cotta Warriors

Asia » China
January 29th 2010

Published: February 8th 2010

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griffster

Buddhist Statue

A couple of weeks ago I was sent to Xi'an, China to participate in a quality audit of one of our derrick equipment sub-vendors. It was a lot of flying for a single day of work, but such is the job. On the plus side, once business was finished with our hosts in China arranged to take our group out to dinner and to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.

I was not a big fan of the city of Xi'an itself. It may have just been the winter season, but it was very brown and looked run-down and dirty due to dry, dusty air and poor construction quality of most buildings. It seemed like the endless urban sprawl was all under eternal "construction phases". The city is huge and I'm very grateful to my Chinese contacts with the company who arranged all our transportation for the trip.

That being said, the Terra Cotta Warrior site was pretty incredible. I was unaware of the fact that the dig site was only discovered in 1974. I thought it had been there "forever" as a historical site. Imagine being a farmer digging a well and stumbling into a tomb containing over 6000

Touristy dig site

historical artifacts over 2000 years old! The emperor of the time believed that what was buried with you was taken to the afterlife, so he decided to not only take his possessions, but an army to protect him. Apparently each one was modeled after a real person too, each face was different (or there were only a few identical ones). There were even fingerprints preserved on a few! They were painted, but only very small traces are left to indicate this. There are still areas that have yet to be uncovered even. There was a language barrier, so I'm not sure exactly what the tour guide was getting at, but she said that they are "waiting for the technology" to dig up the other burial sites which are believed to contain horses and carriages. Perhaps it's better preservation technology (which seems strange compared to any other museum worldwide), or maybe it's just some Chinese government plot to sustain tourism in the long term, who knows.

It was a very quick trip. Now I'm back in Korea with Randene Shiplett, a very old and good friend of the family, who is traveling through Korea. Check back soon for that story!