Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Day 38 Xian

Terra-cotta warriors today. We had breakfast in the sister hostel 100mts down the road because the internet here in this 3month old place is desperate.
The site of the warriors is an hour bus from the city(though could be 30mins if the bus did more than 50 on the motorway) and has two other attractions on the way a hot springs park and the tomb of the guy who ordered the warriors to protect him in the afterlife.
Expecting a rise in entrance fee since its been a bit of a continuing theme it was 110yuan each again nearly twice the book price, but look at that in euro and we would very happily pay €14 in.
Plenty of English guides hassle us for business but we went for the audio guide.
We did the tour backwards as recommended so firstly to see pit3 the smallest with only a few warriors. Then pit2 about the size of a couple of rugby fields is mostly covered by the collapsed roof between each isle so looks a bit like waves of clay ground. Where they have dug and cleared the roof a few horses and cavalry men stand so this pit has barely been started!
Next we walked the museum containing items from other pits including an aquatic bird pit where they recovered clay geese & other birds and an acrobat pit containing clay acrobats for his entertainment in the afterlife.
Being well over 2000 years old it's survived fire(which caused the collapse of the timber holding up the roof) & flood. This destroyed the paintwork on all the clay but metal weapons survived well because they were all chrome plated with a thickness of 10-15 microns 2000 years ago!
Pit 1 the grand finale is as big as a very large aircraft hanger the front third has been excavated & warriors arranged to give the impression of what it was like and yes they all have different faces.
I counted 300 warriors in the front 3 rows before the isles and 6000 are said to be there but most of the excavation is yet to be done. We might have to come back in 30 years to see progress, its 40 years since a local drilled a well & discovered them.
Dinner was in the Muslim quarter again we had kebabs and traditional bread, fed both of us for 38yuan €4.60.
I also had a desert of steam rice cake on a stick with chocolate, nuts & sugar from a street vendor.

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