This morning we began by visiting the ancient city walls of Xi’an – built more than 600 years ago. The wall is much larger than Amie or I had anticipated! It stands 12 meters tall, around 17 meters wide, and if you were to walk around the entire top, it is eight miles long. After our tour guide explained the history to us, we rented bikes and started biking along the top. We figured since we had about an hour, doing the eight miles (or the Tour de Xi’an) should be no problem. WRONG. First off, the bikes were single speeds, and were geared for meandering. Second, they didn’t have any bikes for six-foot tall people, so I got to bike using muscles I haven’t used for biking in a long time! Third, the top of the wall was anything but flat and smooth. We ended up going about a fourth of the way around the wall, and then went back to the gate we started from. It was great to see the difference in buildings between inside the city wall (older, shorter) and outside the city wall (modern, taller). Immediately outside the city wall is a garden, followed by a moat. In the early morning, senior citizens will be out in the garden practicing Tai Chi, dancing, and singing.
After visiting the ancient city wall we took a short drive to the government run Terra Cotta Warrior replica factory. Here we saw how they used molds and then added additional details by hand to create replicas of the Terra Cotta Warriors. This factory is the only one in China allowed to use the same clay that was used for the original warriors. The factory guide was telling us that because of the economic conditions, they are having a hard time selling the full sized replicas, and that he could cut us a special deal on the pricing. I told Amie that we could put one on our front patio, but she refused J
After visiting the factory we drove about 30 minutes outside of town to the Terra Cotta Warrior Museum. Since 1974, when the first pit of warriors was discovered, there have been over 200 additional pits discovered. Only the first three pits are open to the public, and pit number one is the largest. We had the chance to see Mr. Yang, the farmer who discovered the first pit in 1974 while digging a well for water. Due to previous ransacking of the warriors, out of the 8000 warriors found so far, only one has been found that did not need any repairs. Our guide told us of the creation of the army – how each of the warriors was created in the image of one of the actual warriors in the first Emperor’s army over 2000 years ago. Over 700,000 craftsmen were used to create the warrior army, which was placed to guard the Emperor in the afterlife. In order to ensure that no one knew about his army, the Emperor ordered all 700,000 craftsmen killed and burned all the history books that referred to the warriors. So on one hand the warriors are incredibly impressive to see, but on the other hand they are incredibly sad when you think of those that made the warriors. One more fact that I didn’t know about the Terra Cotta Warriors was that they were all painted in vibrant colors, but due to exposure to light and air the coloring has faded. That is why China is not opening up any of the new pits to the public (and in fact has ‘reburied’ some of the statutes) until they have the technology to prevent the colors from fading when being displayed.
For dinner we had a dumpling banquet followed by a Tang Dynasty show. We had over 30 varieties of dumplings, most of which were shaped like the food they contained. The dumplings were served boiled, steamed, and fried. Some of the fillings were chicken, pork, shark fin, walnut, cabbage, shrimp, duck, mushroom, and abalone. The meal finished with a hot pot style dumpling, where they cooked the dumplings in chicken soup at your table. The server ladled the soup for us, and we were told to count how many mini-dumplings were in our bowl. The Chinese have a saying that relates to how many dumplings are in your bowl. Both Amie and I had two, which means we will receive double happiness. The show was an amazing combination of music and dance from the Tang Dynasty. All of the costumes had very ornate decorations.
Tomorrow we will spend the day in Xi’an before flying back to Shanghai.
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