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Gazillions of Terracotta Warriors
There were literally hundreds, maybe thousands of these guys, and each was totally different form the guy next to him. And all still in pretty good condition. Today, we didn't want to leave to hotel. Why? Because for some reason, we were in a 4-star hotel that we'd managed to book at a very good rate. So we finally managed to drag ourselves out by 9:30 and headed over to the major attraction of Xi'an - the terracotta warriors.
The bus journey took 45 minutes, and we were entertained on the way by a talkative old french man who had travelled the world. The guy was apparently now retired but had a small business in paris that he ran 3 out of 4 weeks a month. He spent the other week of each month traveling to some location around the world. Lucky guy!!
Anyway, we arrived at the terracotta warriors to be greeted by a big, very touristy complex. There were about a hundred little stalls set up outside selling everything from chinese pyjamas to maps of cities in china that I'm sure didn't exist. And they were pushy people, yelling at every passer-by hounding them to stop and see their wares.
The Terracotta warriors were interesting though a bit disappointing. They were constructed for a Qing dynasty emperor who decided that his tomb needed
Big mega warrior
Close up shot of one of the guys. All the warriors are human sized. to be guarded by thousands of man-sized warriors made from terracotta. Each was carefully created with extreme detail, including a different face and expression for every one of the 1000s of warriors. These guys were then all buried in little underground caverns all around the emperors tomb, and were supposed to protect him from evil spirits in the afterlife.
Today, whats left is a vast collection of many warriors that are still in immaculate condition. However, the government decided to build a big museum building around the excavations, thus instead of seeing the warriors inside a cave and some ambient cavern, you get to look down into pits with 100s of soldiers lined up, while standing on a bright white shiny platform thats looks as if it was built yesterday. This unfortunately makes it feel like you're looking at museum exhibits rather than ancient statues that were dug up.
Nevertheless, they are still in fantastic condition, and its worth the trip. However, just don't expect too much. Oh yeah, and for those of you who have seen that documentary where the warriors are standing in big open grass fields and are about 10 feet tall - well you
Headless warriors
Apparently the locals went mad and decided to bash some of the warriors up one day. Thus a lot of the guys are headless. probably didn't see the documentary - just dreamt about it, because they isn't such a thing, not in Xi'an anyway, or so I was told.
Our next intended stop for the day was Banpo Neolithic village which was apparently a recreation of an ancient chinese village. Unfortunately we caught the wrong bus and ended up spending 2 hours on a local minibus where the owner of the bus stopped every 50 meters and yelled at the locals asking if they wanted to go to Xi'an. It was so annoying, because the journey to Xi'an was only supposed to take 1 hour and this idiot managed to drag it out the 2 hours with his persistent hawkering. I was tempted many times to just shove him out of the window when he stuck his head out - I'm sure all the people on the bus would have applauded me, and even made me their king.
So we ended up back in Xi'an and decided to go shopping and eating instead. Shoes are incredibly cheap in Xi'an. Unfortunately, if you're a women, you'll find that absolutely nothing fits you unless you're a size 4. Thus Melenie was sadly unable to grab any shoes (although I can't say was incredibly disappointed because this meant I didn't have to carry her bags of shopping around).
The best part of the day though was when we discovered a shop that sold steamed buns of every kind and variety. We had been avidly looking for a shop that sold such wonderous things, and when we finally found it, we almost screamed out aloud. What followed was 30 minutes of rapid food shoveling, ordering and eating every steamed and fried thing in sight. The shop was a pick-and-point canteen - they basically display all their wares, and you wander up and down pointing at the stuff you want. It was a hungry persons heaven, because everything was incredibly cheap yet oh so very tasty and fresh.
That night, we hopped on a plane to Beijing. Nothing exciting happened except for when we were waiting for a taxi outside the airport. There was a huge queue snaking back and forth through the taxi rank. However, for some reason, there was a sudden gap in the queue, and 2 sneaky chinese guys decided to push in. What followed was a rush of 10 other guys who decided to be scummy and push in as well. Most of the other people just looked on in digust. But then, an American guy and his wife decided to do the same. I was a bit crabby from a long day, so I decided express my disgust and loudly exclaimed, "hey Melenie, why don't we go push in like those other two people. I mean, I know its wrong and terrible, and that back in our country, everybody would think we were incredibly rude, but hey, I have no shame, do you?". The wife of the guy looked incredibly embarassed and the guy just kind of gave me a dirty stare. Filthy guy - I hope his taxi took him to the wrong place or something, because we had to queue up for another 15 minutes, while he hopped into a taxi 1 minute later.
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oli b
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