Home Inns(Xi'An Zhonglou South)

... went to their
shop. It was like a fancy jewelry store with the sales clerk on your
elbow ready to convince you of a sale. I wandered into the
collector's part of the store. There I found the attached Buddha,
selling for a mere 689,000 RMD or $98,000 US! (They did say they
would give us a 30% discount. But I'm not sure where we would have
fit it in the suitcase.)

From there we went to a farming
community, Hu ...

... environment, these warriors would remain buried.

Finally we found Pit 1. The famous site of the warriors that every promotion uses. The reality is that these warriors are replicas of the ones that had been found there. The real ones are all safe and secure somewhere else. Still, it was a pretty impressive site. Every warrior is life size and the size of the site is huge. It is also still a work in progress as at least 50%of it has yet to be unearthed.

It had ...

... our departure, we boarded bus 306 for the Y14 ride out and back to the Terracotta warriors. The ride was unremarkable though the bus did stop to drop off students at a massive polytechnic university. At the Terracotta Warrior site, we visited the pits in the 2-3-1 order after wandering through the boring museum. Pit 2 was our first stop and—though large—contained only a few broken shreds. We were more excited about the terracotta archers and horses on ...

... and dont want to encourae them to harass tourists so a stern "Go Away!" does the trick! The city wall was a must do here, and took us about 2 hours and 20 minutes on a rented bicycle which yuo get from the south gate entrance, we could have spent many more hours up there taking photos. The scenery from the wall starts to look the same after a bit, but if you keep your eye out you will see some interesting homes and people. At one part of the wall on the north west corner ...

... unfinished as the Emporer who was building them for his protection died before they were finished. The last tomb that has been dug up is the one that was still incomplete when the emperor passed away. From the Warriors we went back into Xian and spent the rest of the day seeing the sights. That night we had a group dinner of dumplings ( the local delicacy), and then to a bar for a quiet beer.

... like complex and were suddenly face-to-face with thousands of soldiers, an army of terracotta. It was quite amazing to think that this army of 6000 was preserved and untouched for about 2000 years and only discovered in 1976! There were three pits in total. The next two had less soldiers, but more horses, and many soldiers lay still uncovered to prevent their painted faces from vanishing. Each face had been painted ...

... by the 1st century BC, its walls enclosed eight main streets and 160 alleys, and enormous suburbs sprawled outside its ramparts. It was during this period that trade began with West Asia and the Roman Empire. Just as in present-day China, a special street was set aside to accommodate foreign visitors and a protocol department supervised their undertakings. In 25 AD, the seat of government was moved east to Luoyang and Chang'an declined in importance until the first Sui emperor ...

... som vi ikke husker navnet paa ) han ville ha dem med i sin grav som sin personlige her i sitt neste liv som keiser. Saa klart er der shopping med i turer som er organisert saa som silkefabrik, dette var faktisk spennende aa se hvordan man utvinder silke av kokonger. Xi'an er jo som alle vet starten paa Silkeveien som gaar hele veien til Roma. Kvelden blev brukt paa hostelet med at snakke med andre backpackere ...

... than trying out one of the teas on offer. The exit of the museum was the entry into the markets, and the only way to get to the car park. Everybody was trying to sell us the exact same things, and they wouldn't accept that we just weren't interested in a lot of what they were selling. Miguel bought a Terracotta Warriors set for 10 Yuan, which he soon regretted when others managed to haggle down to 8 for a similar set. I accused one seller of trying to gip us when he clearly charged us ...

... stadium) we we back on the overnight train again, this time to Xi'an. The train journey was livened up by some texas hold em when Jenny, an American from Cincinatti, nearly fleeced all of us. Luckily I had some good runs (I'm talking poker hand here not the other sort) and i finished with my wallet back to where it started. Xi'an is back inland from coastal Shanghai, and is famed for its teracotta warriors which were discoverd by ...