Today we saw the famous Terra Cotta Army of Xi’an. This is a very impressive discovery that was made in 1974, very recently! There are 8000 life-sized and unique warriors here, including infantry, cavalry, and archery. When I say “life-sized”, I exaggerate a bit. They’re on average about 6 feet high, which is fairly big by Western standards, but enormous by Eastern. The emperor apparently wanted something imposing. Anyway, I did not realize two things: 1) How big the complex was and 2) The majority of the soldiers are still buried! The reason the remaining soldiers have not been recovered is that the archaeologists want to wait until there is a solution to the problem of the original paint fading away. Apparently, when the first soldiers were unearthed (after being discovered by a now-famous peasant who demands money for pictures), the original painting faded and vanished within a matter of minutes.

The following day we visited a similar site, a modern museum that housed similar findings to the Terra Cotta Warriors. These were basically a huge collection of clay dolls, representing court officials, concubines, and eunuchs. There were also hundreds, if not thousands, of small domesticated animal statues. These were discovered in the 90′s and the museum was built just last year. The museum is modern featuring glass floors which allow you to peer down into the dig sites. The thing that I remembered thinking was how many more relics are still waiting to be unearthed around here?

Panorama of a large sections of warriors:

In the morning, after arriving in the delightful city of Xi’an the night before, we hit a place called the “Small Goose” Pagoda. It’s a peaceful calm place, very quiet. And the peace and quiet was accentuated by a light rain. The rain was welcome because the day before had been very dusty. Xi’an is infamous for the powdery dust that kicks up in the wind. The only thing that will tame it is rain, and the rain started the night that we arrived. Great timing.

It was great just wandering around the grounds near the pagoda. There was a man charging 5 Yuan to ring a giant bell (it brings you good luck of course) and there was a band of girls playing traditional Chinese music.   Nice. I shot a video of both and made this little movie.

After the pagoda, we hit the south gate of the city wall around Xi’an, the old wall that surrounded the city in ancient times. It was still misting some, but it was very pleasant sauntering around on top of the wall. Of course, there was a gift shop in one of the towers (the pagoda is the only place I think I did not see a gift shop thankfully) which was full of stamps, clothing, and expensive furniture. The merchandise is completely different from the stuff I see in Shenzhen. I still haven’t found a DVD salesman.

A neat neighborhood as seen from “the wall”: