Terracotta Warriors

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Sorry we've been a bit quiet recently, but when there's a whole load of China to see, we don't really want to be sitting in front of a computer too much.. But we're seizing our opportunity today and will hopefully get you up to date with all our shenanigans!


We took a PUBLIC bus for about an hour and a half out of Xi'an to see the Terracotta Warriors. The bus was so bumpy and smelly and the driver beeped the loud horn incessantly! Horns are used here like in Sri Lanka - to say "hello", to say "get out of the way", "I'm overtaking", "I've overtaken you", etc, etc. Very irritating!
But we arrived safe & sound.
We watched a film when we got there in this weird 360 cinema. So we can tell you that the Warriors we made by loads of craftsmen for the Emperor who was responsible for unifying China (a long time ago). He wanted them for his tomb so that he would be protected when he died. It took the craftsmen 40 years to make them all, and the revolting peasants a day to destroy them!
In 1974 a farmer was drilling a well and found a warrior head! (In the gift shop they've got an old guy smoking a pipe who'll sign your book - he may or may not be the farmer who found the warriors!).
There was only one warrior whole when they uncovered them, all the others have been painstakingly reconstructed in the pits. There are 3 pits that you can look at. The first pit was the best one, with thousands of warriors. It was amazing. The other pits we're less impressive but still cool.
They know that there are lots of other pits surrounding the burial mound but they don't want to uncover them until they have the technology to prevent the paint from evaporating straight away. Also they think that there are mercury rivers running through the tomb.

Overall, well worth the hairy bus ride! Back to Xi'an for our 2nd overnight train.