one of the best parts of our Beijing trip was not even really part of our Beijing trip. towards the end of our week there we managed to secure sleeper berths in a very nice train that ran overnight to the famous ancient city of Xi'an--"Western Peace". famous to Westerners only since the 1970s, really, because at that time some Chinese peasants digging in the dirt of their (or the Communist Party's) fields came across what has been hailed as the archaeological discovery of the century: a mass army of terracotta warriors all buried near the tomb of Emperor Qin.
the sign on the side of our train that told us we were going from the Beijing West (Beijingxi) station to Xi'an, and the train itself, one of the newest (and i’m sure nicest) in China.
not wanting to appear commercialistic, the Party took its sweet time in excavating the site, possibly to make it look like they weren't pandering too much to the needs of the bourgeois pigs that began flocking to the huge new tourist site. in any case, 30 years on the area is still not completely excavated, though there are now three different buildings covering up separate digs. all but one of these are actually fairly unremarkable, the viewing areas are high above dimly lit pits in which lie only broken fragments of warriors, for the most part. but in the main building, which resembles a very large Quonset hut, the treasures really abound, and are illuminated by bright sunshine streaming in the high windows. this is where all the pictures you see in National Geographic were taken: rows upon rows of soldiers, all in their ranks and ready for battle. it really is quite an awesome sight.
the army of Qin arranged in their ranks.
Xi'an itself is about 800 miles Southwest of Beijing, and the warriors are about an hour's bus ride out of town, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. apparently Xi'an was an ancient capital of China and Qin had himself buried at the foot of some hills a couple of kilometers from the amassed army. i gathered that they plan to excavate the large grass-covered mound that marks his tomb as soon as they can figure out how to do it without destroying all the artifacts in the process. that should guarantee a steady stream of tourist dollars for many years to come. along with a great deal of Chinese cultural education being disseminated to the capitalist peoples of the world, of course.
the rest of the warrior compound is fairly unremarkable, with a very strange "movie" which seeks to reenact some of the ravages that time and the occasional crew of pillagers have exacted on the statues, along with a couple of gift shops and more of China's ubiquitous hawkers and "official" tour guides. the small museum-ish areas are of little help to those who don't read Chinese (or have an official guide...), and once you've seen the warriors, you've pretty much seen it all. it's not really an all day type of thing, but it may be when the hordes of new shops they are constructing on the site are completed, probably just in time for the 2008 Olympics.
various views of the treasures at Xi'an, including one of the replica soldier Jill and I were thinking of adopting, and a close-up of the famously unique warriors. each has his own individual features and was uncovered holding a weapon befitting his rank and station, though the site administrators have taken them all away for "storage" or the Olympics or something like that.
so Xi'an was a whirlwind trip, but we were left with some time after the warriors to explore the city itself before our train out the very evening after our train in. as it turned out we would have been grateful not to have had that time, Xi'an being really just another large city whose major distinction may be that it was somehow even dirtier than Beijing. it's a little difficult to sleep on a moving train unless you start out pretty tired, so our wanderings around town were slow and sluggish, and led us only to the "Small Bell Tower", pictured below.
Xi'an's Small Bell Tower, an apparently fine example of those found in many Chinese cities.
there didn't seem to be a whole lot to see in Xi'an, but we got a pretty decent view of what there was from the guy who gave us a ride to the bell tower in the back of his three-wheeled scooter, which we later realized was actually his motorized wheelchair being put to profitable use. after another McDonald's lunch we made out several hours early for the train station on foot, not feeling like we would be missing much if we just sat there waiting. we were fortunate to have bought some kind of tickets that allowed us to wait in what I suppose was meant to be a VIP lounge, which we welcomed after having seen the unruly crowds amassing around the station. though we were used to Beijing manners by this point, I don't think we had seen people spit on the floor inside a building until Xi’an station.
but we had a good time in our VIP-type lounge. we met some folks from the States--Southern California even--and my favorite, some from right back home in Japan. there was a large tour group that filed very quietly past us, so we knew they weren't Chinese, and the travel agency stickers on their suitcases confirmed their nationality. we said hello, in Japanese, to a group of about four older ladies, and then I asked them, again in Japanese, where they were from. one of them leaned forward and, obviously proud of herself for so quickly ascertaining that we were not actually Japanese, said: “Japan”. well, it was very nice of her, and in any case, pretty soon we were onto our train, in a nice clean sleeping cabin, where this time we passed the night's journey back to Beijing quite restfully.
the sign on the side of our train that told us we were going from the Beijing West (Beijingxi) station to Xi'an, and the train itself, one of the newest (and i’m sure nicest) in China.
not wanting to appear commercialistic, the Party took its sweet time in excavating the site, possibly to make it look like they weren't pandering too much to the needs of the bourgeois pigs that began flocking to the huge new tourist site. in any case, 30 years on the area is still not completely excavated, though there are now three different buildings covering up separate digs. all but one of these are actually fairly unremarkable, the viewing areas are high above dimly lit pits in which lie only broken fragments of warriors, for the most part. but in the main building, which resembles a very large Quonset hut, the treasures really abound, and are illuminated by bright sunshine streaming in the high windows. this is where all the pictures you see in National Geographic were taken: rows upon rows of soldiers, all in their ranks and ready for battle. it really is quite an awesome sight.
the army of Qin arranged in their ranks.
Xi'an itself is about 800 miles Southwest of Beijing, and the warriors are about an hour's bus ride out of town, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. apparently Xi'an was an ancient capital of China and Qin had himself buried at the foot of some hills a couple of kilometers from the amassed army. i gathered that they plan to excavate the large grass-covered mound that marks his tomb as soon as they can figure out how to do it without destroying all the artifacts in the process. that should guarantee a steady stream of tourist dollars for many years to come. along with a great deal of Chinese cultural education being disseminated to the capitalist peoples of the world, of course.
the rest of the warrior compound is fairly unremarkable, with a very strange "movie" which seeks to reenact some of the ravages that time and the occasional crew of pillagers have exacted on the statues, along with a couple of gift shops and more of China's ubiquitous hawkers and "official" tour guides. the small museum-ish areas are of little help to those who don't read Chinese (or have an official guide...), and once you've seen the warriors, you've pretty much seen it all. it's not really an all day type of thing, but it may be when the hordes of new shops they are constructing on the site are completed, probably just in time for the 2008 Olympics.
various views of the treasures at Xi'an, including one of the replica soldier Jill and I were thinking of adopting, and a close-up of the famously unique warriors. each has his own individual features and was uncovered holding a weapon befitting his rank and station, though the site administrators have taken them all away for "storage" or the Olympics or something like that.
so Xi'an was a whirlwind trip, but we were left with some time after the warriors to explore the city itself before our train out the very evening after our train in. as it turned out we would have been grateful not to have had that time, Xi'an being really just another large city whose major distinction may be that it was somehow even dirtier than Beijing. it's a little difficult to sleep on a moving train unless you start out pretty tired, so our wanderings around town were slow and sluggish, and led us only to the "Small Bell Tower", pictured below.
Xi'an's Small Bell Tower, an apparently fine example of those found in many Chinese cities.
there didn't seem to be a whole lot to see in Xi'an, but we got a pretty decent view of what there was from the guy who gave us a ride to the bell tower in the back of his three-wheeled scooter, which we later realized was actually his motorized wheelchair being put to profitable use. after another McDonald's lunch we made out several hours early for the train station on foot, not feeling like we would be missing much if we just sat there waiting. we were fortunate to have bought some kind of tickets that allowed us to wait in what I suppose was meant to be a VIP lounge, which we welcomed after having seen the unruly crowds amassing around the station. though we were used to Beijing manners by this point, I don't think we had seen people spit on the floor inside a building until Xi’an station.
but we had a good time in our VIP-type lounge. we met some folks from the States--Southern California even--and my favorite, some from right back home in Japan. there was a large tour group that filed very quietly past us, so we knew they weren't Chinese, and the travel agency stickers on their suitcases confirmed their nationality. we said hello, in Japanese, to a group of about four older ladies, and then I asked them, again in Japanese, where they were from. one of them leaned forward and, obviously proud of herself for so quickly ascertaining that we were not actually Japanese, said: “Japan”. well, it was very nice of her, and in any case, pretty soon we were onto our train, in a nice clean sleeping cabin, where this time we passed the night's journey back to Beijing quite restfully.
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