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This was a 27 hours travelling with endless bus journey through the winding but scenic mountain roads followed by overnight train to Xian. The soft sleeper cabin was pleasantly warm and clean. We drifted off to sleep by the rocky movement and the murmuring of the train.
As we were approaching the terminal, we saw the old city wall stretched along the border of city centre. Finally, we have arrived in Xian, a city where Emperor Qin Shi Huang once conquered the six major kingdoms and uniformed writing, currency, etc under his centralized government.
Once again, we were excited to have arrived in a new place. We strolled along the old streets and wondered around the Muslim quarter. Every so often, we bumped into a few of the trillion historical buildings and each and every one of them were equally charming in a different way.
We chilled out in our bar at night. Strangely, all the local Chinese flocked into this backpacker's bar for their Saturday night out?! Quite a weird scenario with all the Chinese splashing out on their drinking spree and all the Mr Scrooge backpackers occupying the seats all night with just one drink.
We couldn't do much the next day because it was raining all day.
Never be too sad, the highlight began when we went to the Terracotta Warriors. It was amazing! None of the warriors is identical. We were impressed by the uniqueness of each individual warrior, from their costumes, body shapes, faces, right down to the thread of their shoes. Just to give you an idea of the grandeur of its former glory, it has 6,000 warriors, horses, chariots and lots more to be excavated. Amazingly,Terracotta warriors were only first discovered by chance by a well digger in 1974, same year as Jon was discovered!
The Terracotta Army has been one of the highlights of our trip so far (the other sights around Xian weren't). We feel relaxed, recharged and happy to have seen one of the greatest ancient sights there is.
Onwards to Lijiashan....
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