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June 19th 2008 by Tina
Terracotta Warriors

Posted under China

In Xi’an we have experienced personally the effects of gross overpopulation in China. We came to Xi’an – on the night train from Beijing – to see the famous Terracotta Warriors, proclaimed by some to be the Eighth Wonder of the World. Xi’an is what you might call a budding metropolis – another bastion of consumerism with what appears to the outsider as a healthy middle class. The city is consumed by concrete – impersonal residential towers and enormous commercial buildings. It is not a typical American downtown with rings of suburbs but rather an ever-expanding city almost perpetually cloaked in haze.

Our hostel offered a guided trip to see the Terracotta Warriors but I convinced Aaron that their premium was too high and we should take the city bus instead. A member of the hostel staff told us which buses to take: the 603 to the train station; then switch to the 306. It sounded easy enough. We walked to the bus stop and waited for the 603. We had seen many city buses, in Beijing and Xi’an, pass by with bodies stuffed in like sardines so we should not have been surprised when the double-decker 603 came to a halt at our stop disguised as a sardine tin.

Only three passengers disembarked and, at the same time, three Chinese girls slipped in front of us to the entry door. This is common practice in China. There is no etiquette, no chivalry here. It’s every man for himself. And if you’re standing in a line, a person will cut in front of you while looking you right in the eye. Luckily, we’ve had prior experience with this uncivilized behavior and are unabashed about throwing an elbow or shoulder in front of these devious little cutters. In the case of the three Chinese girls at the bus stop, we let them go for two reasons: 1) from their usurped position directly in front of us, their removal would have required an unusual amount of manhandling, which surely would have caused a scene; and 2) with the size and disorganization of the crowd at the bus stop, we were not 100% certain that we’d arrived before them.

So the three girls climbed onto the packed bus and we followed. Not surprisingly, three more people pushed their way on behind us with one vocal and pushy woman imploring us to push further into the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. To complicate matters, the bus was designed for Chinese people so Aaron was about eight inches too tall; he could not stand straight but had to hunch over in the claustrophobic cabin. Thankfully, after a few stops, he found a reprieve by standing in the stairwell leading to the upper deck. After about thirty long minutes, we finally reached the train station and easily found the 306, which was much more spacious and comfortable, for the remaining hour ride to the Warriors.

Discovered by accident in 1974 by peasants digging a well, the Army of Terracotta Warriors is one of most important discoveries of ancient Chinese history. Commissioned by Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, the army of thousands of life-size soldiers in battle formation stands guard at the emperor’s tomb. Some say Qin Shi Huang feared evil spirits in the afterlife while others believe that he expected his rule to continue after death. Ancient scholars seem to agree that the emperor was paranoid and fanatical, which would explain his obsession with creating a “pretend” army. Whatever the case, the army of soldiers, when viewed in its partially restored state, is undeniably impressive.

The museum is constructed over the three original excavation sites. It is recommended to view the pits in reverse order so we began with Pit 3 – the smallest – and worked our way to Pit 1 – the largest and most impressive. The soldiers were positioned in long corridors divided by walls made of rammed earth and wood beams. The most fascinating aspect of the army was the level of unique detail among the statues. Each soldier had a unique face. Even the tread on the shoes was not uniform. The soldiers’ dress and hairstyles differentiated their rank and all held bronze weapons, though the weapons had been removed.

The excavation sites each showed the broken condition in which the soldiers were discovered. A sign near one of the pits indicated that, to date, not a single statue has been unearthed intact. When we reached Pit 1, where approximately 6,000 soldiers are thought to stand (although only 2,000 have been restored to date), we met with the postcard view of the Terracotta Army. The excavation site was larger than a regulation football field and less than half of the site had been fully excavated; the two-thousand restored warriors, dating back to 210 B.C., stood stoically in battle formation with horses and all. As we stood facing the front line, it was easy to imagine the army in its full grandeur and completion with Emperor Qin Shi Huang pacing back and forth, barking orders at his earthen men.

We completed our visit with a brief stop in the museum of artifacts, which showcased some of the weaponry and tools found near the sites as well as two half-size bronze chariots with drivers, remarkable in their level of detail. As we followed the exit signs to the parking lot, we were steered through a “village” of souvenir stalls. Strangely, the single alley of stalls was surrounded by a, two-storey commercial structure, seemingly intended for tourist amenities, which lay almost completely vacant. Aaron suggested that it might be an initiative of the Chinese government to create construction jobs, even though there is no practical need for the completed projects, though we were never able to confirm it. We rode the 306 bus back to the train station in Xi’an but decided to walk back to the hostel rather than enduring the claustrophobic misery of the 603.

1 Comment »

One Response to “Terracotta Warriors”

  1. Ollie SimpSon on 19 Jun 2008 at 6:43 pm #

    Man, that sounds pretty cool except for the little girls “jacking you for your seat”. Aaron should have given “the bone” flipping a sharp elbow upside the head. Well maybe not as you were probably out numbered by a lot on the bus. Anyway, sounds pretty cool. We got the post card from Cambodia and loved it. Thank you guys for that and for thinking us so often.

    Love you, “O” & Lean