Terracotta That Takes a Stand

So, here we are third post of the week.  Have you read them all?  Were they the highlights of your week?  I hope not, but they are pretty good right?  It would be pretty sad if reading our blog was the highlight, but in the unlikely event that they are or if you have had other highlights but still enjoy reading our blog, or if you are just here to look at the pictures, or if you skim the writing and are mostly here for the pictures, or perhaps if you just read to find all of my spelling and grammar mistakes... CAMI; here is another installment.

After our Beijing adventures we hopped on a plane to Xi'an.  Xi'an is a very historically significant place and there is a good documentary about it on youtube if you are interested.  Mostly now it is famous for one of the newest archeological wonders of the world, the Terracotta Warriors.  Hence, why we went. 

So we flew in at 11:00pm and caught the express bus to downtown Xi'an.  Once downtown I was planning on walking to our hotel, but it was raining and it was late so we tried to catch a cab.  My first attempt was thwarted by the fact that the Taxi driver discovered that I didn't speak Mandarin.  He listened to me try and explain where we were going and he was like no, no, no- shaking his hand - and then moving on to a chinese couple who he quite happily took on their way.  So, instead of getting a car we got a little trike that wheeled us around through the rain.  The trike was more fun anyway.

Pulling into Xi'an after a long day of travelling - 

We stayed at this place called the Canaan International and it was described as a Chinese business hotel, nice enough, and much better than I was hoping after seeing the area that we were staying in.  It kind of looks like a whole bunch of Cecil Hotels.

The View from our Hotel 

So we got ourselves to bed and woke up to get some breakfast.  We had some bread from a nearby bakery and proceeded on our way to the main train station to grab a bus to take us to the Warriors.  Once again we were thwarted by people en masse.  Seriously, bad idea to go when everyone is on holidays.  The lineup to get on the bus was two hours long.  There were some people offering tours, but none of them spoke english and there are a lot of sketchy tours that take you to their relatives shops to make you buy things and waste your time.  So we negotiated with this gentleman named Warren.  Warren offered to take us to and from the Warrior museum and to have a friend of his pick up tickets for the price of the tickets themselves, no shops, no nonsense and good conversation the whole way.  We took him up on his offer.  

Cami and I on our way to Terracotta Warriors - Cool Intersection

So upon arriving we were greeted with the official onslaught of tour guides offering their services, made our way past the hundreds of tour groups and tried to find the historical video.  I had read on some forums that the best way to see the warriors was to go watch the video, then go through the pits in reverse order.  The video was a really old 360 degree video with some English narration of the Qing Emperor's unification of China and his subsequent desire to be as blinged out in heaven as he was on Earth, thus building his terracotta army.  After his death there were a lot revolts and his tomb was looted and destroyed, which is why most of the warriors have had to be put back together.

We grabbed some popcorn on the way out and proceeded onto the Second pit (we found it before the third pit).

Watching the 360 movie

So the second pit, is pretty small and doesn't really look like much, you can see some terracotta fragments, but mostly it is just a couple of pits.  There were these guys in glass casings that everyone was fighting to get pictures in front of.  Cami stayed out of most of it, but I elbowed a couple of elderly women and children out of the way to get these shots for the blog.  Hope you enjoy.

Terracotta Warrior - This one is called Mushu, yes like the dragon in Mulan  

Terracotta Warrior - Bruce Lee 

Pit Numero dos  

After seeing Pit number 2, we moved onto Pit number 3 which I didn't put a picture of.  Maybe I should, no it's fine... you get the picture, pit number one is where it's at anyway.  So we saw pit two and then got ourselves in line for pit number one.  

We were a little sneaky, because the line up on the far side of the building was a lot shorter than the building close to the other pits, so we worked our way around and waited for a good half hour before we were let in.  Speaking of line ups there were no less than fifty guards ensuring that everyone waited their turn in line up and to make sure that no one else died.  That's right I said "no one else" because the day before someone died apparently from the crowds, either getting pushed or trampled or something, but I doubt they upped the guards any after the death, so ya we were taking our lives into our hands on this visit.  I can take them and their kung fu line skills.

The Line Up to get into Pit One It goes out and back and then around the Corner 

So after getting into pit number one we got to see all of the warriors lined up in a row just like you've seen them in other pictures.  There are just tons of them and I can't imagine what they would have looked like when they were first done.  They would have been all painted and had their weapons and chariots and gold everywhere and such.  All and all pretty cool.

Finally in Pit One!!!

Pit One from the Side, I think it was about 300 yuan for private pictures on the lower level, so like 50 bucks each  for the lower level pictures, we decided not to get them.  

So Many Warriors!!!

These are the more recent excavations and the partly finished Warriors in the back 

Close up of the partly finished warriors 

After visiting Pit number one we were done with the warriors and we walked out to grab some pomegranates and for Cami to pose with a maple leaf - Go Canada!

Cami representing Canada -

Eating a Pomegranate outside of the Market - for future reference good pomegranates are white, not red

Surprised about the pomegranates, I don't know why all of the pictures of pomegranates are red or pink when the good ones are supposed to be white, or at least that was what Warren said.  We didn't buy any terracotta warriors and resisted all of the little giftshops on the way out.  There was also this really stinky, I  mean really really stinky sour garbage smell, oil deep-frying a tofu looking something and it smelt nasty, but people were buying it up.  

So Warren drove us back to Xi'an and with the exception of a near miss t-bone - Picture traffic jams on the right on a six lane highway, our car speeding around the traffic jam in the wrong lane and another car from the jam trying to make a uturn in front of us.  It was a little exciting, but nothing really that out of the ordinary for chinese driving.  

Warren dropped us off and we walked to find something to eat.  We found HOT POT - it was delicious.  Cami even put on the bib.  You get these pots of soupy yummy ness and you take the veggies and the meat and put it in, then you dip them in a sauce that you get to make yourself, Cami's was better than mine, then you EAT it.  Props goes to Steve for telling me I had to get Hot Pot.  It was uber Yummy.

Hot Pot!!!

This the extra spicy special recipe - it was really spicy!!!

Cami wearing the Hot Pot bib

After Hot Pot, there was a DQ and if you don't know this about me I LOVE DQ!!! Even more than Frostys from Wendy's.  I have a secret flavour that most people don't know about.  It's called Tropical and it is Banana, Pecan and Coconut.  Delicious and while they didn't have tropical, I had an oreo and it was awesome.  Another time Cami got a Cranberry one and it was really really good.  But not as good as tropical.  Seriously go get one if you have never had one.

Me and a wonderful DQ treat - they also turn them upside down or they are free 

After Hot Pot and DQ we called it a day and really we were kind of over seeing things in China.  We could have gone to the wild goose pagoda or seen some other stuff, but we were pretty much done and the things that we really wanted to see were accomplished.  You could spend years in China and not see it all.  Our favourite part was the Great Wall.

One anecdote to finish off this post.  So while we were riding to the airport these little girls pictured below with Camilla chatted us up and we played on the iPad together.  They introduced themselves in English and we tried to speak a little bit of mandarin.  Their names were Cici and Amy and they were 8 and 11, but surprised us with how good they did on Biggest Brain.  They were doing exponents and bedmas and crazy math stuff that we don't learn until junior high.  Their English was also really good.  Crazy smart asians.

Cici, Amy and Cami playing biggest Brain on the bus ride back to the Airport

That is it that is all. Hope you have enjoyed.  We are in Hong Kong for another couple of days, then we are off to Japan for 12 days.  Fun right??? It will be some more crisper weather which will be nice and hopefully we'll see a lot of fall colours.  Here's hoping.

Peace out Hombres... LP esq.