Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Plan 1/2 day to visit the Terracotta Army, it has been referred to as the 8th Wonder in the World. Qin Shi Huang dreamt about building this empire for his afterlife when he was 13 years old. It is estimated over 700,000 workers were used (mostly slaves) for this project. Those workers that helped with the Emperor's tomb were rewarded with graves beside him. His concubines, servants and the workers were all buried alive with him when he died. In fact, anyone who knew about this site were killed or buried alive. The Emperor had very loyal servants that kept this site secret until it was discovered in 1974. I should also add, Qin initially started the construction of the Great Wall.
This major tourist attraction contains three pits. Pit 1 contains 4 columns of warriors in 11 passageways, there are over 1,000 infantry in battle formation. No two soldiers look the same since the faces were hand molded, plus there is ethnic diversity within the army reflected by different hairstyles, facial expressions and headdress. Average height is 5'11" and higher ranking officials are slightly taller. The original statues were painted in different bright colours and made with interchangeable parts. There is a strange eery, but magical feeling as you walk around this pit; you soon realize that Emperor Qin Shi Huang was obsessed and/or insane building this afterlife empire.
Pit 2 contains 1400 soldiers but most are not intact. The main attractions are the glass encased infantry soldier, middle and high ranking officers. The last Pit shows the headquarters with approximately 68 senior officers.
The tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang is bobby-trapped and is not fully excavated. I've been told this is painstaking since the tomb is surrounded with mercury rivers and if you are not careful, you can trigger the hidden mechanism that shoots poisonous darts towards you.
There are plenty of vendor stalls to purchase your miniature cheesy replicas of the Terracotta warriors and restaurants at the entrance. It reminds me of a North America theme park.
This was our last day in Xi'an, the hi-light was our visit to the Terracotta Warrior site. We took the overnight hard sleeper train from Xi'an to Chongqing (2nd furnace). Rafael wanted everyone to experience an overnight train in China. I did not enjoy this 14 hour train ride and it was the first time I really missed the comforts of my home. The hard sleeper has 6 berths and the bottom one is more spacious than middle and top, it is noisy and the beds are uncomfortable. Everyone except for Rafael had a poor sleep. If you are on the bottom berth, expect people to sit in your bed since it becomes a public area. People are permitted to smoke on trains. Smoke easily travels and can seep into a compartment, I woke up 2 or 3 times coughing. The ideal way to travel occurs in the soft sleepers, 4 berths in a lockable compartment, but these sell out quickly. Needless to say, our next long distance travel will be on a plane (as proclaimed by May with the full support of Kim, Bryce, Kyle & I). I don't want a repeat of this experience again nor would I recommend it.
I woke up @ 6:30am Friday morning, it's the first time I've seen a blue sky. That scenery changed quickly when the train passed a coal power plant, spewing black smoke clouds.
There is an update with the Lay's chip flavor, Kyle gives thumbs up to calm & refreshing Lemon Tea. He claims "it taste like ice tea and salty potato chips!" I also give a thumbs up to ice cream flavored Oreal cookies, and Kim likes the mango flavor (taste like Tang).
Funny, "my people" don't think we look like Chinese. So far, we been mistaken as Japanese, Singapore, Taiwanese, and British Chinese tourists.
Today is a travel day. We arrived in Chongqing and was hit with a wall of heat, 42 degrees ... My clothes stuck to me and I had some major "swass" action (aka sweaty ass). We are off to take a cruise down the 3 Gorges.
- comments