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: