Arriving in Xian, we found ourselves once again in a very nice hotel looking like we had just emerged from a coal mine. The pollution does not improve.
Xian is another modern Chinese city. Our hotel opened onto main square which, aside from the afore mentioned McDonalds, was very pleasant. Evening time brought crowds of people, some obviously enjoying the atmosphere, some flying strings of small kites and some finding new and novel ways to make money out of unsuspecting tourists. Just along from the hotel was an open air theatre where one could sit with a beer and enjoy nightly displays of dance, song and the occasional Karaoke. Unlike the usual drunken British affair, the Chinese take Karaoke seriously and as a result the show tends to be surprisingly good. In chinese style we had our own Karaoke evening whilst in Xian, and the results were nowhere near as impressive.
Xian also sports a very nice street market with a multitude of nice restaurants and other permanent and semi-permanent stalls. Adjacent to that is the Muslim quarter where you can find just about any kind of souvenir you can imagine. All in all, aside from the heat and humidity, Xian is a very pleasant place to spend two or three days.
The star attraction here is of course the Terracotta Warriors. For those who don't know these are a 2000 year old army of clay Chinese warriors set up to guard the tomb of the first chap (on record) to have united China under one leader. I have obviously heard of the Terracotta Warriors and kind of knew what to expect, but I have never really read much about them. As a result, I was not really prepared for the spectacle that greeted me. There are three distinct pits on the site. The third of these is the 'command post' and is a small pit about the size of a large house containing 40 or so figures. Impressive, but not outstanding. The other two, however, are housed inside buildings the size of large aircraft hangers and contain literally hundreds of figures (the second is yet to be fully excavated). It really is quite astonishing to see this rank and file of incredibly detailed figures all of which were originally rendered in full technicolour. The whole display represents a show of decadence on the scale of the Great Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, and once again you have to take your hat off to an historic figure who commanded the power and resources to produce such a spectacle. What is perhaps even more astonishing is that only one of these hundreds of figures was found intact. The rest have been painstakingly reconstructed by Chinese archaeologists.
Some people clearly have too much time on their hands!
As an aside, whilst on the visit we were 'lucky' enough to encounter the farmer on whose plot of land these figures were discovered. He is reputedly now well past his hundredth birthday and dodders around the site occasionally deigning to sign programmes for visitors. Considering that he probably has and is continuing to make a handsome living out of this, he is a miserable, rude, cantankerous old git. Lucky my a*se!
Xian is another modern Chinese city. Our hotel opened onto main square which, aside from the afore mentioned McDonalds, was very pleasant. Evening time brought crowds of people, some obviously enjoying the atmosphere, some flying strings of small kites and some finding new and novel ways to make money out of unsuspecting tourists. Just along from the hotel was an open air theatre where one could sit with a beer and enjoy nightly displays of dance, song and the occasional Karaoke. Unlike the usual drunken British affair, the Chinese take Karaoke seriously and as a result the show tends to be surprisingly good. In chinese style we had our own Karaoke evening whilst in Xian, and the results were nowhere near as impressive.
Xian also sports a very nice street market with a multitude of nice restaurants and other permanent and semi-permanent stalls. Adjacent to that is the Muslim quarter where you can find just about any kind of souvenir you can imagine. All in all, aside from the heat and humidity, Xian is a very pleasant place to spend two or three days.
The star attraction here is of course the Terracotta Warriors. For those who don't know these are a 2000 year old army of clay Chinese warriors set up to guard the tomb of the first chap (on record) to have united China under one leader. I have obviously heard of the Terracotta Warriors and kind of knew what to expect, but I have never really read much about them. As a result, I was not really prepared for the spectacle that greeted me. There are three distinct pits on the site. The third of these is the 'command post' and is a small pit about the size of a large house containing 40 or so figures. Impressive, but not outstanding. The other two, however, are housed inside buildings the size of large aircraft hangers and contain literally hundreds of figures (the second is yet to be fully excavated). It really is quite astonishing to see this rank and file of incredibly detailed figures all of which were originally rendered in full technicolour. The whole display represents a show of decadence on the scale of the Great Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, and once again you have to take your hat off to an historic figure who commanded the power and resources to produce such a spectacle. What is perhaps even more astonishing is that only one of these hundreds of figures was found intact. The rest have been painstakingly reconstructed by Chinese archaeologists.
Some people clearly have too much time on their hands!
As an aside, whilst on the visit we were 'lucky' enough to encounter the farmer on whose plot of land these figures were discovered. He is reputedly now well past his hundredth birthday and dodders around the site occasionally deigning to sign programmes for visitors. Considering that he probably has and is continuing to make a handsome living out of this, he is a miserable, rude, cantankerous old git. Lucky my a*se!
posted by Al at 11:56 pm
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