Exploring China - Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors

Arrived to Xi’an in the pouring rain, found our driver, and headed for our hotel. Should be a short ride from the rail station as unlike airports, they are located within the center city.  Nope. We drove for over an hour! Apparently, bullet train stations are on the outskirts of the city in order to accommodate the high-speed rail network. The stations are as large or larger than many airport terminals.

Bullet train after we arrived at Xi'an Station

Xi’an is big. High rise residential towers everywhere. Massive building towers to

Random Street Art!

accommodate its nine million residents. We learned from our tour guide Eric that it is quite common that most people don’t even know their neighbors. There is a complex metro system highly utilized, but there are still over three million automobiles out on the very wide but congested roadways.

We headed out in the massive congestion about an hour away to visit the site of the Terracotta Warriors. The story of the these warriors is quite interesting. This site was built by Emperor Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor, to guard over him in the afterlife. He had artisans (and probably some slaves as well) create an entire military regiment out of clay-  each soldier, warrior, and horse, a unique, life-like character. A roof was constructed above these clay figures to protect them from the elements. The entire clay army faced what was to be his mausoleum 1.5 kilometers away. Over time, the wood pillars holding the roof deteriorated and slowly collapsed, burying the Terracotta Army for centuries.

It was in March 1974 when local farmers digging a well discovered fragments of terracotta soldiers and thus found the long sought after site which was known to exist but never found. Since the discovery, archaeologists have been working to slowly excavate and restore the statues and relics that were buried five meters down. Approximately 2,000 statues has been recovered and restored, but there are a total of 8,000. Only a small area has thus far been restored and opened to the public. Much of the site has been uncovered, documented (including findings that still have their original painted clay) and reburied to protect the figures from further deterioration. Of the entire Terracotta Army, only a single figure was found fully intact (“The Lucky One”).   The remaining figures were unearthed, each found in hundreds of little pieces, and painfully rebuilt like a complicated jigsaw puzzle (think 3-D, hollow, brittle). The actual mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shihuang remains closed to the public in perpetuity, but several artifacts from the burial site were removed and put on display in the Terracotta Army Museum.



Back to Xi’An and our first stop was the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, first built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty to house Sanskrit Buddhist Scriptures.  It soon collapsed and was rebuilt between 701-704.

Then onto the Old City to see the last and only remaining fully-intact historic city wall in China- 14 kilometers in length and about 20 meters in width (a very popular site today for marathons and bike races as well as strolling on the weekends). There are four main gates and within the walls lies both an historical, pedestrian area as well as boulevards, wide and open, flanked by modern retail malls (very high-end designer stores). The only building requirement is that nothing above six stories can constructed. Many historic sites within the Old City walls include the Morning Bell (built during the Ming Dynasty in 1384), Afternoon Drum Pagodas, the Chinese Muslim Mosque, and Muslim Street (your run-of-the-mill street food vendors along the five block stretch plus some food items you couldn’t imagine if you tried!). After we parted ways with our tour guide, we wandered alone around the Old City and managed to get a taxi back to hotel with just a note from the guide with the hotel address in Chinese. It was a bit dicey for a time as four taxis turned us down, but we finally found a taxi that agreed to take us!  Thank goodness....no one spoke any English and we would have been really stuck.

Temple in front of Big Wild Goose Pagoda	Buddha inside temple	looking up from base of pagoda
On top of Xi'an Old  City Wall	Great Mosque	Muslim Street, just outside of Great Mosque
Street food on Muslim Street...I "believe" it is grilled octopus on a stick	Bell Tower	...and it's bell

Pagoda with prayer offerings

Pomegranate everything!

One of main boulevards in walled city

One of the many highlights that particularly stood out from our visit to Xi’an

Biang Biang Noodles!!!!!!!!!

was our private tour of the Tangbo Art Museum. Here we spent some time with Natalie (a very bright, self-assured young woman and one of the Museum’s Curators) to learn about the region’s cultural heritage through its art, architecture, and music. Our tour ended with a private Chinese calligraphy class where Natalie taught and guided us in the use of black ink and calligraphy brushes to draw bamboo pictures and Chinese characters.  Not an easy language but we were successful in drawing some bamboo stalks as well as individual characters, including the single, complicated character for “Biang Biang,” the local noodle dish (which we absolutely loved and ate at every opportunity!).

My Masterpiece!