Last weekend I went on a short trip to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors. Xi’an itself was not the most exciting of places that I have been to; the most interesting sites were the Muslim quarter, the city walls and the Terracotta Warriors which were all quite spectacular, but the city itself was just like any other big city in China: a mixture of bad air and dusty, grotesque, grey and unfinished skyscrapers.
Xi’an is the capital of Shanxxi province, said to be one of the oldest cities in China and the beginning of the silk road, which is where the arab influence comes from. So on day one I went and explored the city walls of old Xi’an which I imagine are like a smaller version of the great wall – with all the air pollution it stretches far off into the distance giving you the impression that it’s never ending, but actually it just surrounds the old inner city and takes about 4-5 hours to walk all the way around. I particularly liked the moat and the parks on the outside, which broke up the different shades of grey of the wall and the surrounding buildings. And the red rickshaws add a brilliantly nostalgic touch to it …
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Day two: the Terracotta Soldiers. There’s a long drive to the excavation site (about an hour outside of Xi’an) which takes you via all the tourist shops and souvenir places that pretend to be ‘educational’ places where you can learn about how the soldiers were made back in the olden days, but actually the area showing you how the soldiers were made is a 10th the size of the souvenir shop attached to it – another version of fantastic Chinese tourism. Anyway, once actually at the excavation site, a huge big ‘airplane hanger’ (or pit 1) houses thousands of soldiers and it looks very impressive, indeed. Not quite as cool as Everest but still very cool … and considering that each is hand made and therefore has a different face and slightly different body shape than the other they are definitively real amazing works of art.
Pit 2 and 3 are not quite as big and pit 3 is actually not excavated, because until they have figured out how to preserve the elaborate paintings on the soldiers they want to keep it closed up (glad they understand the significance of that rather than excavating the soldiers to attract even more tourists). There are horses, officials, acrobats, chariots, warriors and musicians, most of which are still in the ground and covered up.
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