We have spent the last two days in Xian, here to view the famed Terracotta warriors of the Emperor Qin. They lie about an hour outside town, a trip you arrange either by paying your hotel $20 per person, or by navigating a holy hell of a train terminal, where you catch a local bus for about $1. We did the latter.
The bus takes you northeast of Xian through what the Lonely Planet describes as a fertile river plain. The description is accurate so far as it goes. But it leaves out the nuclear power plant, the post-industrial ruins, and the moldering communist era communal apartment blocks that lie along the way. Pomegranates are grown alongside a muddy road with buses and trucks belching clouds of smoke over them. I like a good pomegranate, but I have my limits.
You eventually find yourself deposited in a vast parking lot. You cross this, and find a vast row of restaurants and gift shops. Then you have a fifteen minute walk through a gauntlet of shills selling food, dim sum, and miniature terra cotta warriors. Then, you reach the gate. Next, you have another fifteen minutes of slogging through lines of tour guides offering their services. Finally, just as you are about to give your mortal coil its pink slip, you reach the complex.
"So mind boggling it's hard to wrap your head around," writes the editor of the LP in a superbly executed mixed metaphor. Not entirely accurate, unfortunately. There are three main pits, the third of which contains about five broken shields and a crushed chariot. The second contains about 20 or so warriors, many with their heads cut off.
The first is very impressive, comprising several hundred (thousand?) warriors, each one made of baked clay with a different face. This detail is important because it means that molds were used only once, greatly increasing the work. They are also both realistic and in many cases touching. These were people. Their features are varied and human: here an eager young man on his first campaign, there a grizzled, wild-eyed veteran you'd want to avoid on the field of battle.
Nicole and I could study them well because we had a 300 millimeter camera lens with us. Otherwise, you're kept at such a distance from them that it's difficult to see them except as rows and rows of warriors standing in review.
They were the creation of the first emperor of
Beyond Qin, Xian is a tourism one-trick pony. The nicest thing about it is that the city walls remain in tact, giving you a good idea of how seriously the Chinese took external threats.
2 comments:
I would agree that there's not much beyond the pits in Xian, but the markets are pretty fun - let's all stare at the round eyes - and quite frankly unless you've had a tandem bike race around the city walls you just haven't lived! Tell me you did the full circuit of the walls on a tandem.... Bet that's not in the lonely planet!
For me the highlight is still having other tourists ask how much you paid for your reproduction warriors, only to hear them gives ranges of between $20 and $30 for the small ones. The secret pride of knowing that you managed to negotiate 3 for $1 put a smile on my face. Capitalism we're good at - negotiating, not so good!
Actually, the markets are good for a poke around. There's a particularly nice one against the south side of the wall. Very traditional. We didn't mention it before because we only stumbled on it our last few hours there. One of the dangers of writing a travel blog is that you never have enough information to make a definitive statement about anything. And yet you blather on making them all the time.
As for riding bikes, I wish I'd known about that beforehand. I looked at bikes, but the idea of launching myself into Xian traffic in anything less than a tank was somewhat disconcerting.
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