Xi'an - Terra Cotta Army

Today we started off with a little walk after breakfast around the block from our hotel.  This is the first time I have actually felt like we are in China, well the real China not the glitzed over tourist China.  Beijing, at least where we were staying is all new buildings, and everywhere we visited was really fixed up, probably because of the Olympics, easy for them to show us only the manicured part of China .  Xi'An was the capital of China before Beijing, so still lots of history here, and still lots of new buildings, but so much more interesting to drive around than Beijing.  On our walk we saw lots of people heading off to work, lots of little shops selling everything from tires, lots of cigarette shops, little tiny restaurants cooking outside over wood, news stands, I could have walked around here forever, but back to the bus and on we go.

Big Goose Pagoda, no time to stop, too many of us

Our first drive by was the Big Goose Pagoda , there are so many people on our bus that it would have been a real pain to stop and unload so it was just a drive by for pictures from the bus.  A little disappointing as it looked like a beautiful spot to explore, at this point in the day we thought maybe a few of us would take a taxi and come down in the evening for a visit, little did we know what was ahead of us for the day!

Next stop was to a Jade factory.  We learned a little about Jade, and saw a small factory that has been set up for the tourists where we could see how the carvings are done.  Very interesting, some real artisans at work.  I bought a beautiful Jade bracelet that is supposed to bring me good health if I wear it on my left arm, the minerals will be absorbed through my body to my heart, I'm not sure I got a money back guarantee on that.  Actually 3 of us from our tour bus negotiated together, I am sure we could have done better on the price on our own, but it is done, and I love the bracelet.

Jade Factory

Tour buses at Jade Factory

Next stop is the Terra Cotta Army factory.  This is a huge place that also sells just about every size of the army figures, you can get them shipped home for free and no duty if you buy the ones that are huge.  The price was also huge.  We were also given a little history of the army and what we would see later when we go to the museum.  This store is huge, on 2 floors that you could shop for just about everything that we have seen so far on the tour, as well as a whole section of lacquer furniture that was crazy expensive.  On the third floor is the restaurant where we ate lunch.  Today we don't have assigned seats and it is a buffet for a change.  There was also someone making noodle soup that you could pay for extra, they were making the noodles on the spot, fun to watch them twirl the raw dough and then it all split into strands of noodles.  Lunch was a little disappointing, the line was extremely long as so many bus tours stop here for lunch.  It was a terrible set up, when the line gets long for the main dish you must line up and go through the dessert section, then you get to the salads and hot dishes.  Right before the salads there is a sign that says start here, I finally made it to this spot and a woman jumps in here and says she is starting here because that is what the sign says.  I showed her where the back of the line was but she insisted that start here meant this is where she was to start.  I told her that everyone behind her had waited, but she said that was too bad.  I could feel my blood start to boil at this point, oh my thank goodness we don't have anyone like this on our bus.  I certainly hope she isn't on our cruise ship!  This is the first time we have had really any options for salad, so I filled up on lettuce and vegetables, so many were afraid to try anything, lets hope I don't have any reactions!   Of course leaving the restaurant to go back to the bus we had to reverse through all this huge store again, reminds me of Disney a bit, everything has a store of some sort.

Store where you could buy souvenirs

After lunch we went to visit the Terra Cotta Army museum.  It is quite a walk from the parking lot to the pits.  They have all kinds of men waiting when you get off with wheelchairs to rent and they push you around all day, tempting, but I passed.  These Terra Cotta Army pits were found in 1974 when four farmers were looking for a new well and found a clay head.  They thought it was a head of a Buddha, they tried to keep this fact hidden since at the time there was no religion allowed in China and they knew they would be in trouble.  Problem was Buddha religion doesn't allow them to rebury the Buddha head so they had a big problem.  They tried to keep it quiet, but of course word spread through town, they did get in trouble, but what an amazing thing it turns out they found.  Right now there are 3 pits

open that you can go and visit, and they estimate 300 pits are here in total.  The first main pit is amazing, there are different levels of soldiers from archers to generals, as well as horses and chariots were found here.  I was surprised at how few have actually been totally restored, they still have so much work to be done here, it will never be completed in our life time that is for sure.  It is about the size of 2 football fields and all under cover in a museum like building.  The second pit is less excavated and about the size of one football field and also covered in a building.  The 3^rd pit is quite small, and again covered.   In the 1^st and 2^nd pit there were archaeologists at work, we got very close to them in the second pit, what meticulous work, many of the statues are in ruins and need to be pieced back together, and some of these pieces are really small, horses mixed up with soldiers etc, what a puzzle!   When these were first discovered they had many colours, but after being exposed they quickly faded and now you really don't see any colour at all.  We were told this is one reason they have not opened the emperors tomb, they do not have the technology yet that will keep the colours.  All through this site we are also hounded by vendors trying to sell us figures of the soldiers, we wanted to buy some for the grandkids but talked about waiting until we were leaving so we didn't have to carry them around all day.  Next thing I see Andre bartering with one of the guys, trading his new Rolex watch that is cutting into his arm for the figures.  We were with a big part of our group at this time so everyone is having lots of laughs as Andre is negotiating, in the end the guy decided he didn't want the watch and Andre paid cash for the figures, great now we have 2 hours left to walk around with these pretty heavy figures, not too happy.

The trees are further along here in Spring that Beijing, the cherry trees have started to blossom and there are some beautiful magnolia trees on the property.  This is really a lovely place to spend the afternoon and we thoroughly enjoyed the day.  Andre is happy again because he found mango ice cream for sale.  

Incredible Terra Cota Army

Huge jigsaw puzzle

Beautiful Magnolia Trees in bloom

Pit #1, incredible, 2 football fields in size

Drivers passing time until tourists come back to the buses

Various pictures as we drove around Xi'An

So many new apartment buildings

Buses, cars, bikes, scooters, all mixed up in the traffic, crazy

Special delivery?

Would this pass code at home?

Tonight we have a dumpling dinner and show planned for us.  This turns out to be quite a bit of fun.  We are back sitting at our assigned table with a lazy susan for twirling around.  We start off with soup and little salad type things, and then 14 different dumplings are brought out one at a time.  We had lots of fun with the group, each dumpling is shaped like what you are going to eat, so pork was a little pig, fish was a fish, duck was a duck, you get the idea.  They told us when to use sauces and when to just eat them as served, well we like sauces so much I ate sauce with them all, so they tasted a little all alike for me.  They ended with walnut dumpling and fruit dumpling.  You get 1 free glass of beer, pop, or water with all our meals, and tonight they guys bought extra beer as well, which is only 4.00 for 1/2 litre bottle, so very reasonable.  We were also served warm rice wine tonight with the meal, which I thought was pretty good.



Duck dumpling

Fish Dumpling

Stacks and stacks of dumplings

The show tonight was some music with traditional instruments which was very interesting, and they would alternate with dancers.  Beautiful costumes, and our seats were very close to the stage so hopefully Andre got some good pictures.  I struggled to stay awake, surprise, surprise, but Andre kept nudging me so I only nodded off a couple of times.  We were literally about 15 feet from the stage so I think he was embarrassed, but I wasn't the only one!

Xi'An is a walled city, on the drive back to our hotel we drove along the wall and through a gate, beautifully lit up at night.  It is about 50 feet high and nearly as wide, very impressive.  I would love to have more time to spend in this city.

Wall City Xi'An



Back to the hotel at 10 PM, we need to have our luggage outside the room by 11PM as they are taking them to the airport for us and checking them in.  We need to be at the bus for 7AM, so another full day coming up!