Xi'an- Monday, August 1, 2016

     We had breakfast from the hotel's long buffet tables under chandeliers that were tinkling with the breeze.  Then we met Herbert for a long, hot, but ultimately interesting day.

     We started at the Big East Gate on the city walls that surround Xi'an.  The gate and its walls were built in in the 1300s during the Ming Dynasty, though portions of them have been destroyed including by Japanese bombers in World War II, and have been rebuilt since then.  In some parts of the walls, some pitting can still be seen from shots that were fired during the civil war when the communists took over.  Once you climb a very long flight of stairs, you are up on the long, flat walk at the top of the wall.  The defensive wall is a rectangle around the city, and bikes were available to rent and ride around on it.  It would have been fun to try, but we didn't have the time and it was already too darn hot.  We walked along the wall past two watchtowers in ramparts that jutted out to defend the wall against attackers.  Today, there weren't attackers outside the walls, but there were people doing tai chi.  To the inside of the wall was a temporary farmers' market where people were selling fruit, meat, and other things out in the heat.  Scott got his picture taken again.

     After a pleasant time on the walls, we had the better part of an hour to go to get to the place where the Terra Cotta Warriors are.  We passed pomegranate trees, and at one point we could see the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China in the distance, although we weren't able to get a picture of it.  It is an artificial hill that looks almost like a pyramid in shape, but it is covered with green trees.  Descriptions say that the emperor was supposed to have been buried in the middle of a model of his realm, with pearls in the ceiling for stars and rivers flowing with mercury.

      Our first stop in this area was a shop where they make terra cotta warriors of all sizes.  We saw women pushing clay into molds and the kilns that they will be baked in.  We got a few tips about how to identify the kinds of soldiers.  Generals, for example, have beards.  Of course, there were many sizes for sale, and Scott ended up buying a set.  He could have gotten them cheaper in Beijing, but these came from Xi'an.  Now we have to figure out how to lug them around.  There was also some beautiful lacquerware on display and for sale.

     From there, it was a short drive to the Terra Cotta Army itself.  Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the Qin Dynasty and the first Emperor of China, died in 206 B.C.  Some ways away from his main tomb, an army of 8,000 life-size warriors made of terra cotta were placed in an underground building.  Each soldier was an individual with unique facial features and completely armed for combat with real weapons.  There were infantry soldiers, archers with bows and arrows, cavalry with horses, wagons, and officers.  This entire army stood at the ready, but forgotten by the rest of the world, for 2,200 years.

     In 1974, local farmers were trying to dig a new well and accidentally discovered the greatest archaeological find in Chinese history.  Sadly, the underground building that had been around the soldiers had probably been burned and certainly collapsed on top of the statues, and none of the warriors are intact.   Since there discovery, archaeologists have been working to restore and preserve them.

     We began at the group known as #1.  It is the largest of the three groups and was the first to be discovered.  Row upon row, the columns of infantry soldiers stand in situ right where they have stood for 22 centuries.  They are now covered with a building the size of two soccer fields, and crowds of tourists jostle around the walkways on the perimeter to get a view and take pictures.  The expanse under the roof is huge, and not air conditioned because it is believed that air conditioning will cause a fungus to grow on the terra cotta.  There are many piles of debris and places where archaeologists are continuing to work, but the mass of soldiers that have been restored are impressive to look down upon.

     The second building we went to is known as site #3.  It is a much smaller grouping of soldiers, representing the headquarters of the army.  There are officers as well as horses, wagons, and guards, but there doesn't seem to be a commander-in-chief.  It is believed that this role was intended to be filled by the emperor himself.

     We had lunch at the Terra Cotta Warriors site.  It was a "dim sum" meal.  Julie explained that dim sum means "appetizers" and six or seven plates were  set before us with unidentified dishes for us to serve ourselves from.  It's safe to say that most of our family prefers to eat food that we are familiar with, and even Julie, the most adventurous eater of us, has to be careful about what she eats now so she doesn't end up getting sick.  All four of us picked through the dishes with our chopsticks, and we all found enough to eat.

     There were two men making noodles in the corner of the room.  One was carving the pieces from what Anna called a big brick of noodle, almost as if he was shredding cheese.  The other was pulling and stretching noodles by hand, flipping the dough around and slapping it loudly down on the counter in front of him.  We all tried the soup that had his noodles in it, and the girls said they liked it.  Anna saw some things that she can't unsee when she went to use the stall-less bathroom, but other than that, we all felt like lunch was a pleasant adventure.  It's certainly the most real Chinese food that we've had on this trip so far.

     Herbert left us to eat on our own.  When he returned, he cheerfully said, "O.K.  You've eaten lunch. Now, number two!"  Of course, he meant we were going to visit site # 2, since we had already seen # 1 and # 3, but he made us and a few other Americans nearby chuckle.

     Like sites 1 and 3, site # 2 is inside a roof that covers the entire grouping.  Most of the warriors in site 2 remain buried and have not been excavated at all.  Samples tell us that there are archers, cavalrymen, wagons and other soldiers here, but archaeologists need to be careful as they proceed.  All of the warriors were originally painted, but the color on nearly all of them has been destroyed when it has been exposed to air.  Archaeologists are trying to develop a process to preserve the colors when these soldiers are excavated.  In the meantime, an example of each type of soldier is on display behind glass here.  This display allows a close inspection of them, and indeed, some of the paint can still be seen.

     We made our way back past the restaurants, shops, and tourist traps to the van, and all of us nodded off to some degree on the long ride back to the city.

     At the city, we had one more stop with Herbert- the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  It is an important Buddhist site that dates from the 7th Century and the Tang Dynasty.  The pagoda was built after the famous scholar Xuan Zang traveled to India on the Silk Road, which started in Xi'an.  He returned with over 600 Buddhist texts which helped the religion grow in China.  The pagoda was built to house these texts.

     The tower of the pagoda is seven stories high, but right now it is undergoing some restoration and is completely covered with scaffolding.  There was no way we wanted to climb it in this heat.  We visited some of the smaller temples in front of it.

     In Julie's words, it makes us feel "conflicted" when we visit religious sites like this one.  Of course, the First Commandment is in our minds, but even beyond that-- Even if you just take these visits as opportunities to view other cultures, you still feel like you're an intruder.  There were people praying devoutly, and we were gawking at them.  Scott did take some video and pictures and felt all the worse when Emma said there was a sign that said, "No photography."

     We saw several large statues of Buddha there, but the last was the "Happy Buddha" which Herbert said was a distinctly Chinese appearance for him.  He said Scott's belly was almost as big as Buddha's.

     As we were driving away, Herbert said that it was the monk Xuan Zang's story that inspired the Ming Dynasty's novel Journey to the West.   This novel tells the story of the Monkey King. who with several other fantastic characters, accompanied the pilgrim monk on his journey to bring Buddhism to China.  Scott finds the character of the Monkey King to be interesting, and likes finding the many representations of him.  Currently, Scott has been watching an animated version of the story on Youku, the Chinese version of YouTube.  Regular YouTube is blocked in China.

     We went back to the hotel.  The girls swam briefly in the pool in another building in our hotel complex.  Then we all collapsed from exhaustion.  It wasn't that late, but the heat today was draining  We just couldn't bring ourselves to walk a few blocks to where the shopping was where we found food last night.  We were happy to pay way too much for room service if it meant we didn't have to leave our beds and the air conditioning.