Terracotta Warriors

Trip Start May 30, 2006
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Trip End May 31, 2007


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Flag of China  ,
Tuesday, July 4, 2006

The terracotta warriors... or 'clay blokes' according to susi. if you're thinking of going, take the bus. DO NOT GO ON A TOUR unless you like being taken to the bus driver's nephew's terracotta warrior factory. Our hostel laid on the trip for 220y. We didn't take it, deciding instead to lie in, and buy tickets back to Beijing. The bus cost 7y there and 7 back. thats 14y people. And not one person tried to sell me a goddamn thing til i got inside the museum (90y). total spend (including obligatory ice-cream) 104y. and i was back in time for tea.

I've heard some horror stories about the tours so DON'T. You have been warned.

So, the warriors. Nothing could quite prepare me for the scale of the thing. They've unearthed 3000 of the buggers so far and they reckon theres another 7000 under there still. The first warehouse/hanger thing, is huge. 2/3rds of the finds are in here, and it's only half dug... if that. The suprising thing is that these little fellas are actually 6' tall a piece. Now i don't know if my time in china qualifies me to make this statement, but in my experience, at 6'2" i'm a good foot taller than the average Mr Beijing.. and unless they've shrunk as a race since 800ad, i'm guessing it's a bit of wishful thinking. They look good though, and before they were set on fire were all pretty colours and stuff... so they tell me, or at least the informative video at the beginning did... as all the signs were mostly in chinkynees. The other two pits show that the guyts who set the other lot on fire did a better job here, as the findings are mostly shaped bits of rubble. Impressive shapes though.

I'd show the pics, but my nice new memory card that apparantly had space for another 1000 photos couldn't handle it, so that was that. Got a few though.

i'll put them up when iut doesn't take 3hours at a time!
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