Terracotta Warriors

Before we came here, the general opinon we'd heard about Xi'an was that apart from the Terracotta warriors there wasn't that much to see and in general its not that nice a place (the word 'dump'did feature quite often). After one day here, we can say that the city does look like a construction site and is, as Beijing, quite dusty and smoggy bu tthat doesn't mean it hasn't got its own charms. One thing that noone seem to mention is the perfectly preserved city wall, which is to say the least, quite impressive. You can go on it, and even rent a bicycle and cycle around it. IT does feel quite good that even though its a national heritage monument they let people use it. But hey, it is a wall after all, designed to withstand war, what harm can tourists on bikes do?? It kept the mongols out for a good while, I'm sure it can handle rubber tires as well. But more on that once we've actually done that...

Today was all about what everyone else does as well, see the terracotta army on site. We caught it whe it was on display in London (British museum) so we knew a little about it already.Thus we decided to make our way over there ourselves, to the horror of the tour operators, english speaking guides and people trying to flog guidebooks. Getting there is not as tricky as the tour operators would like you to think. There are several buses from the railway station and they are all very cheap. We took #306 for 7 RMB, but we were overtaken by #419 as well which seemed to be quicker (or maybe thats just down to individuial drivers, I am convinced timetables do not exist). And it seems to take about as long, judging by teh fact the the tour group from our hostel turned up at the same time as us, and they left the hostel before us.

Once there, as lone tourists you are immediatly attacked by vendors of programmes and tourguides, but if you know the basics, theres not really a lot more they can tell you. Basivcally the complex was all built by the emperor Qin Shi Huangdi over 200 years ago, and it is a vast complex () with over 20 pits filled with infantry, chariots, horses and military officers which would be the emperors army in the next life. But there is also a non-military section, full of aninals, artists, entertainers and regular people, though as these pits are quite far, we did not visit them here, but elements from them were on display in London and were equally impressive.

Coming here was one of the reasons we started talking about a longer trip and it did not disappoint at all, and the experience is about on par with being on the great wall in my book.

That was about what we had time to do today, so we still haven't got a real verdict on whether the only thing worth seing here is the army or not Even though we saw the drum and bell towers yesterday and they were quite impressive, there are just som many of those in other cities as well. Xi'an needs to provide a little more to beat the tough competition it has. Thats tomorrows mission ..

PS,

We've now created an album containing some of the more interesting pictures from Japan, and it can be found here, we'll add one for China soon.