After we woke up, dressed, and disembarked the overnight train, we headed into the unknown world of Xi'an and found "Waldner" waiting for us...
It was nice to find our guide so easily. Waldner decided his Western name would be named after the Swedish table tennis player Jan-Ove Waldner. As we worked our way through crowds Caroline and I would ask, "Where's Waldner?"
Once again, the traveling is often as interesting as the site we are going to. These three wheeled trucks were cool. I'd seen three wheeled cars before, but a truck?! Carrying a tree no less.
Our first stop of the day was the Xi'an inner city wall. It's quite well preserved and maintained, so it is quite a site to see how the ancient capital city (at the time) defended itself. They really play up the site with decorations and costumed guards.
This is the view from on top of the wall. It's amazing how wide it is. The walls I'd seen in Europe were easily a third to a quarter as thick. This thing was massive. They had bastions sticking out of the wall at every 120 meters figuring archers could shoot 60 meters, so could hit anyone trying to climb up the wall from the side.
This was apparently the Test Shrine. It is where people went for some type of test... Not sure what kind.
You can rent bikes to ride on the wall. The wall goes all around the city center, so you can ride the bikes all the way around. As far as I could tell, each section of wall looked a lot like others, so we didn't ride the bikes.
The exterior of the wall. Yep, I'd hate to try to scale that wall...
The called this the fish-barrel. It is one of the gates into the city. The visitors would be let into this courtyard where you could be trapped in and shot at from all the surrounding walls. Now, it's a parking lot for the tour busses.
Our next stop was another state run craft shop. This time, it was a shop that makes Terracotta Warriors. Or, at least, souvenir versions of all sizes. We actually bought three smaller ones. They offered to ship the life sized ones, but where do you keep such a thing? They had headless warriors for taking pictures with. William doesn't need the silly costume!
The Terracotta Army is protected by a large enclosure. This is pit #1 and there are a total of 3 pits. The other two are much smaller. The army was discovered in 1973 by three farmers digging a well. They aren't farmers anymore. Only one is left and he signs books in the visitors center. They say that none of them could write at the time, but is now very good at signing his name...
It's hard to get a good close look of the ones in the pit. You view them from above and a ways away.
Still fascinating to see them all lined up.
A great deal of the place has yet to be excavated. Here, they are working to uncover the next area of warriors.
The whole site had been demolished and burned by a peasant uprising not long after it was built. So almost all of the army was found in this condition and had to be put back together.
I didn't realize that the warriors were originally painted to look life like. The paint would be present when uncovered, but fall off soon afterwards. Only the pictures record the color they had when uncovered. Little creepy if you ask me.
This is the Terracotta Army Hospital. It's where they reassemble the warriors as they recover the parts.
These guys were hiding behind a blue tarp. Guess they didn't count on tall, long armed people sneaking a shot over the tarp... It looks like they are using a turntable, lighting, and cameras to record the details of all sides of the completed warriors.
They also had some of the better examples on display where we could actually see them up close. They were an amazing site to see.
After we woke up, dressed, and disembarked the overnight train, we headed into the unknown world of Xi'an and found "Waldner" waiting for us...
It was nice to find our guide so easily. Waldner decided his Western name would be named after the Swedish table tennis player Jan-Ove Waldner. As we worked our way through crowds Caroline and I would ask, "Where's Waldner?"
Once again, the traveling is often as interesting as the site we are going to. These three wheeled trucks were cool. I'd seen three wheeled cars before, but a truck?! Carrying a tree no less.
Our first stop of the day was the Xi'an inner city wall. It's quite well preserved and maintained, so it is quite a site to see how the ancient capital city (at the time) defended itself. They really play up the site with decorations and costumed guards.
This is the view from on top of the wall. It's amazing how wide it is. The walls I'd seen in Europe were easily a third to a quarter as thick. This thing was massive. They had bastions sticking out of the wall at every 120 meters figuring archers could shoot 60 meters, so could hit anyone trying to climb up the wall from the side.
This was apparently the Test Shrine. It is where people went for some type of test... Not sure what kind.
You can rent bikes to ride on the wall. The wall goes all around the city center, so you can ride the bikes all the way around. As far as I could tell, each section of wall looked a lot like others, so we didn't ride the bikes.
The exterior of the wall. Yep, I'd hate to try to scale that wall...
The called this the fish-barrel. It is one of the gates into the city. The visitors would be let into this courtyard where you could be trapped in and shot at from all the surrounding walls. Now, it's a parking lot for the tour busses.
Our next stop was another state run craft shop. This time, it was a shop that makes Terracotta Warriors. Or, at least, souvenir versions of all sizes. We actually bought three smaller ones. They offered to ship the life sized ones, but where do you keep such a thing? They had headless warriors for taking pictures with. William doesn't need the silly costume!
The Terracotta Army is protected by a large enclosure. This is pit #1 and there are a total of 3 pits. The other two are much smaller. The army was discovered in 1973 by three farmers digging a well. They aren't farmers anymore. Only one is left and he signs books in the visitors center. They say that none of them could write at the time, but is now very good at signing his name...
It's hard to get a good close look of the ones in the pit. You view them from above and a ways away.
Still fascinating to see them all lined up.
A great deal of the place has yet to be excavated. Here, they are working to uncover the next area of warriors.
The whole site had been demolished and burned by a peasant uprising not long after it was built. So almost all of the army was found in this condition and had to be put back together.
I didn't realize that the warriors were originally painted to look life like. The paint would be present when uncovered, but fall off soon afterwards. Only the pictures record the color they had when uncovered. Little creepy if you ask me.
This is the Terracotta Army Hospital. It's where they reassemble the warriors as they recover the parts.
These guys were hiding behind a blue tarp. Guess they didn't count on tall, long armed people sneaking a shot over the tarp... It looks like they are using a turntable, lighting, and cameras to record the details of all sides of the completed warriors.
They also had some of the better examples on display where we could actually see them up close. They were an amazing site to see.
2 comments:
Could you tell if every one of the statues looked different?
I am SOOOO jealous! The terra cotta army is amazing. I would love to see it in person. I do think it is a bit creepy too. I agree with you that the painted ones are especially. They look like bodies. The statues are unreal. How cool.
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