We had to be up ridiculously early to be on the coach by 5.30am, in order to catch our flight to Xi'an from Beijing airport. Once in Xi'an, an ancient capital city of China and home of the Qin dynasty which was the first to rule a unified China, we had a few minutes to check in to the hotel before driving to the Terracotta Warriors, some distance outside of the city.
The warriors are quite astounding. They were discovered about 30 years ago by a farmer digging a well in his field. The first Qin Emporer (some 2200 years ago) had his tomb built whle he was alive, and had it populated with many thousands of warrior statues, built from terracotta. Each warrior is life-sized, and every one is different in some way. There are even horses and chariots. The Emporer believed that he would need an army when he died, in order to fight off his enemies. However, once he died, his dynasty fell apart and the tomb was sacked. It has lain buried and forgotten for over two millennia until being recently unearthed. The majority of chambers remain buried, because the warriors are all coloured and the colour has faded quickly on those warriors which have been exposed to the air - they are waiting until a a technique can be discuovered to keep the colours in place before digging up the rest.
The site now has world heritage status and rightly so. For once we had enough time to fully appreciate the whole place, which was nice, so I got some good photos.
This evening we drove around Xi'an in the dark to see the town lights - the town has an amazing city wall which is still fully intact, and when lit up at night it is a real sight to behold. I'm enjoying Xi'an much more than Bejing - it has a lot more character.
I might get the chance to do another entry tomorrow, but if not this will be the last one for several days, maybe over a week, since we're off up into the Qinling Mountains on Friday to look for giant pandas in the wild. When we come back we'll have one night in a hotel but then straight off to join a cruise ship on the Yangtse River - I doubt they'll have internet access there!
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1 comment:
(a) hello! (b) when do we get to see panda piccies! (we want pandas) (c) yes you blog updates are working (but will you see this comment if you can't see your blog) (d) cool airport, I wish all buildings in the UK were great well designed and interesting. (e) goodbye.
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