Up early and after brekkie headed off to visit the site of the terra cottawarriors. The site is outside of Xi'an some distance on the freeway. On theway we stopped off at a factory/shop where we saw how the modern versions are made, but the technique is thought to be similar to that used originally. Thisplace was really interesting and you could buy warriors of all sizes right up to full sized! The latter could be bought and shipped home for around Y4800 ($800). They also made the inlaid furniture and screens as well as carpets and all sorts of things. The furniture and screens were just fantastic and I will post some photos so you can see what I mean. You could spend an absolute fortune here!

After buying a couple of items it was on to the site itself. The bus parkedsome distance away and we had to walk through a lovely park area alongwinding paths to the main site which is very large and consists of five orsix main buildings. Three buildings hold pits 1, 2 and 3 with pit 1 being theone that everyone will be familiar with. As you will see in the photos, theexcavations and the building are huge! It is amazing to think that they havebeen here for over 2000 years. The soldiers almost all exclusively face east(the direction from which the mongols attacked), with the exception being afew who were placed as flankers at the corners and sides.

Pit 2 has another four separate excavations each one of which holds adifferent type of soldier. In one were foot soldiers (who mainly wieldedlances), in another were archers, in a third were horse archers and in thefourth were officers (I think).

Pit 3 was quite different in that all of the figures in this one are officersand they are all facing each other which seems to indicate that thisrepresented the command centre.

A fourth building houses the amazing bronze chariots and related artifactswhich were discovered at a site near to the emperor's burial mound somedistance to the east. The chariots are incredible and I will include a photo for you. They were about one third actual size and are made of bronze with many of the associated paraphernalia such as bridles etc cast from gold, silver and other metals. Once even has an umbrella with a gear which allows it to be rotated depending on the direction of the sun.

Note that the weapons used were mostly bronze but they recently discovered that they are coverd with a very fine 0.5mm thick coating of chromium oxide which makes them rust proof and allows them to reach a greater degree of sharpness. How this was done remains a mystery and to understand how significant this is, the process was not perfected by modern civilizations until 1936 in Germany!!!

A fifth building houses a shop a theatre and a museum of sorts and a sixth building is a tea house come souvenir shop. This where we went at the end of the visit and enjoyed some tea (and a beer of course). They had a list of some 20 odd teas and each table had a sort of compartmented bowl which housed sampes of the leaves of all of the teas on the menu. You could buy some lovely tins and have it filled with your choice of tea and dad got one. Not sure if it will make it into the country however!

For luch we went to a huge place which could have housed several hundred people! We went up stairs along corridors and through dining rooms until we finally came to a locked door which was eventually unlocked and we were led into a rather cold, huge room with just the two tables set for us. The food was failry ordinary and was all vegetables except for one chicken dish. From what I could tell we were the only people dining in th place. Our guide told us that in the summer the place would have been packed! For the last couople of days our guide had been telling us that today's lunch would be a "farmer's lunch" and that the place we were going to was the only one that was within reasonable driving distance of the site. Hmmm!

After lunch we drove the 1.5 hours back to Xi'an and to the Little Wild Goose Pagoda. This was a buddhist pagoda built in the 13th century I think and it was quite interesting but surrounded by the usual tourist traps! Dad bought some old Chinese coins from the Sang dynasty I think (around 1280AD). Possibly class A fakes but who knows? The gardens here were particularly lovely. Just a note on the gardens: wherever there are gardens you see the older chinese, most often retired, out doing their tai chi or dancing or similar. It is common in every city.

From there we went to visit the moslem quarter near the centre, and inside the walled part of the city. Here we wanders down a street which had some very interesting food on display, to say the least! All kinds of raw meats and offal and all sorts of things being cooked. Particularly interesting is the practice of cooking walnuts by placing them in a large pot which is heated from underneath by a gas ring and filled with sand and walnuts. A motorised stirrer keeps them turning and you can then buy the cooked walnuts. I didn't try them but others said that they were good and that the process of cooking them softened the shells.

Finally after that we returned to our hotel for a quick visit before heading out for our dinner of the local speciality, dumplings, and a Tang dynasty cultural show. On the way we got caught in the most amazing traffic jam for at least 20 minutes (see photo)! The dumplings were excellent and were made in the shape of their contents where possible. I will include some photos as they were really well done: there were little pigs, ducks and chickens. The show was excellent and was based around the Tang dynasty culture. The emperor, courtisans, soldiers and entertainers all got a run and whilst the music was a westernised version of their traditional material, with full orchestral arrangements it really was very good and the lighting and costumes were just terrific. One lovely set piece was when a woman in period costume played the Chinese horizontal harp alone on the stage. It was very beautiful.

After the show we returmed to the hotel and had a couple of nightcaps in the lobby bar before retiring.