The Terracotta Warriors
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2008
1
10
40
Trip End
Oct 31, 2008
Xianyang,
China
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Xi'an is chaos, there is no other way to describe it. And chaos with lots of people. It has a population of 8 million - however this does not make it a large city as far as China is concerned.
We then went to a factory to see how they make the "authentic antique" Terracotta Warriors. This was actually of use as you got to see them close up, could touch them (a serious crime for the real ones) and see how they are made. This is thought to be very similar to the process used to make the original ones. You could even buy a full size / life size one for your garden.
Next stop was a start visit to BanPo - a neolithic village. This was as interesting as the other neolithic sites we've seen round the world, basically a bunch of pole holes and some broken jugs. (You may have guessed that neolithic sites are not our thing.)
Then it was off to the Terracotta Warriors.
This is what we knew about them before we got there - the warriors are over 2,000 years old, they are life size, were originally carrying real weapons and each has a different face but there are only a proportion of the warriors dug up, almost none of these were found intact (only a handful have been uncovered intact), they have been "restored" and placed back in the trenches in military formation. Only a small number of the warriors are on show and this represents only a tiny amount of the total site. Plus, you cannot get close to them.
It is probably fair to say that the site met our expectations. It is impressive and yet...
What causes our hesitancy was the "choice" of day. When we booked everything we didn't know that this week was a Chinese holiday and today was National Day. This would go someway to explaining the number of people around Xi'an during the day and into the evening. It would also explain why there were an estimated 38,000 people at the Terracotta Warriors today. This made it a bit busy.
The site cannot cope with that volume of people. It did, however, highlight some aspects of the Chinese people - their impatience, their inability to do anything calmly or slowly and their lack of concern for personal space and use of elbows etc to get where they want to. In other words, think of a rugby scrum without the organisation and rules. It wasn't a good place to be claustrophobic. Too many people, too little organisation and too much fighting to make it fun.
Come back in 20 years and I believe (and hope) that it will be up there with the top archaeological sites in the world.
Due to our late return from the tour, we had to change our evening plans. So we went back to the Great Wild Goose pagoda to see musical fountains and fireworks. There was only us, our local guide and thousands of Chinese (and this time not another Western tourist in sight).
On both journeys to and from the pagoda we further enjoyed the Xi'an traffic jam. On return to the hotel about 10pm we also got to enjoy the Xi'an evening smog - made a pleasant change from the day time smog.
The highlight of the day - for Shane anyway - was when we were standing around waiting for the rest of our party to gather. At this point Sarah became famous!
To explain, as we were standing waiting a Chinese family wandered past. One of the children (5-8 years old) said "hello" so we replied. Suddenly his father pushed him towards Sarah and got him to stand next to her whilst he took a picture.
Sadly, fame does not naturally suit Sarah and what then happened was more in line with her standard approach to people (and more specifically children). The father then pushed their other child towards Sarah in an attempt to get another picture. Sarah smiled at the kid and he ran away screaming.
For those who believe that Sarah gets nothing but grief from me, this story is entirely true and in no way fictional or exaggerated.
Comments
BanPo
Sounds suspiciously like an episode from Time Team