Warriors and Pandas

From Beijing we took our first ovenight train 12 hours South to Xian. The train was pretty good certainly when compared to Amtrak and National Rail. Our 4 berth first class cabin was big enough to manoeuvre and the beds pretty comfy! We were sharing with a young guy from Xian who got straight on to his top bunk and was asleep seconds after we left Beijing and Grace who worked for the Bampo museum in Xian who had great English. Finally! We chatted away for some while ate a bunch of crisps as the Chinese throughout the train tucked into their spicy pot noodles.

The next morning we agreed that it was in fact one of the best nights sleep in a while. We rolled into Xian at around 9am to find our driver for the day "Jack" waiting for us, dressed in quite a swish suit! Jack (or Trevor as he was renamed) came highly recommended by Janice and Carol the Aussies on our Wall tour. We picked up our Kiwi Wall friends Luke and Katie and headed for the Warriors.

The Terracotta Army are the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China. The terracotta figures, dating from 210 BCE, were discovered in 1974 by some local farmers near Xi'an, Shaanxi province, China near the Mausouleum of the First Qin Emperor. The figures vary in height, according to their role, the tallest being the generals. The figures include strong warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians and every single one is different. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which are still buried in the pits. It was pretty amazing, most of all the sheer vastness of the site (having previously seen a small but good exhibition in the London Museum 2 years ago with Ana Maria).

Day 2 in Xian was all about the pandas! A group of 6 of us (all English) went to a local animal sancturary which has 11 resident pandas, which had either been rescued locally or bred in the station. It rained the entire time but a couple of the pandas came out to check us out as much as we were there checking them out. We stopped on the way back for a Chinese lunch (I will not miss Chinese food once I leave here that's for sure). I am also now the proud new owner of a nice wooly hat for my onward journey to Tibet, thanks to Seb, one of the guys on our trip. I will certainly need it.