I slept right through last night and was woken up by the 7am morning call. We had an hour and a half to grab the breakfast and get ready, before heading off to see the Terracotta Army today.
First
stop, however, was a factory producing the terracotta soldiers replica in
Banpo. They showed us how to mould the clay using the mould to make the body
of the terracotta soldier. It then took 2 days to dry the models before they
were put into the oven for baking for 8 hours. Then they showed us how to
make lacquered furniture and screens. After these demos, it's the usual shopping
time - I bought 2 small terracotta army models as the larger ones, though
impressive, were too heavy to carry with me for the rest of the trip. The
real huge life-size terracotta solder cost about 12,800 yuans - even with
the 20% discount it still worked out to approximately 10,000 yuans which was
about £900!)
Apparently
these replica soldiers could be washed and the colour would not fade away.
The Australian couples spent ages looking and each couple bought a half-size soldier to be shipped home. By the time we left the factory we were about half an hour later than what Andy had hoped.
Andy decided to make an executive decision to skip the Banpo Village as that was undergoing renovation - though his boss insisted on us going there. He's such a rebel but no one seemed to mind - after all, what's there to see apart from plastic sheet covering all the exhibits?
We headed to Huaqing Pool which was a hot spring east of Xi'an. The garden section was like any imperial garden really, with a statue of Yang Gui-fei (allegedly) in the lake. The baths themsevles were a bit like Bath, nothing that spectacular to report. We learnt some history about Emperor Tang Ming and his concubine Yang Gui-fei. - how they fell in love, and then when there was an uprising, the army demadnded that Yang should die as they thought she had been the root cause of the misfortunes, and then after she committed suicide, the story of the emperor trying to find her remains, and managed to strike a deal with goddess that he could meet Yang once a year on the 15th of the 8th lunar month.
Next stop was the Terrocotta Army site in Lintung. We passed the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi on the way - it was just a hill really from a distance. The site of the Terracotta Army must be one of the most touristy places in China - so many street vendors. We headed straight for the entrance and we had to go through an X-ray security check - wow!
We
started the tour of the site at Pit No. 1, which was absolutely massive -
I thought the whole pit would have been uncovered, but how wrong could I be.
We then went to the 360° cinema to watch a film on Qin Shihuang. Bought
a book on the terracotta army, with a signature by one of the two farmers
who was still alive after discovering this important 20th century archaeological
find.
After lunch we visited another 2 pits which had different structures and
army formation. Again the majority of the pits were still covered and remained
to be excavated. But what was already there was rather impressive. Some of
the pieces were broken due to the destruction caused by the rebels uprising
after Qin Shihuang's death, but it must have been breath-taking in the original
state. Also visited a museum which had 2 chariots restored. Pit 2 also had
several different warriors behind glass so that they could be inspected at
close-up, and the pit itself was huge too.
When we left the site, we were approached by some farmers / local vendors for some postcards for 10 yuans per pack. Andy checked the first set of 12 and it was the correct number of postcards in the pack.When I wanted one I was handed another set which, when I counted ,had only 9. So I refused to part with my 10 yuans. Obviously the travel advice I read up had paid off this time, and Andy had also come across this scam for the first time.
Fell asleep on the way back to the hotel. When I got back, I spent 45 minutes packing the suitcase and rearranging everything. Then, armed with my camera, I walked down to the South Gate - crossing the main road at rush hour was no fun business but I survived.
Met
up at 7pm to go to Da Fa Chang for dumpling banquet, which consisted of 6
cold dishes and 19 different dumpling dishes - including "crystal"
dumpling, pork. chicken, pork and lotus, duck, walnut, seafood, vegetarian
etc. The duck ones actually came in the shape of ducks, and there was one
type that's supposed to look like monkey's face, but it looked more like monkey's
bum!
After dinner, everyone decided to op for a massage while I headed back to the hotel, put the camera on recharge, and then went to the internet cafe to check my mail.... Spent an hour there inhaling the cigarette smoke - cough cough cough.... passive smoking.....
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