Xi"an and the Terracotta warriors

We arrived in Xi'an after an exhausting 20 hr journey from Sydney. We had to change planes in Shanghai and had a very tight time frame of 45 mins to get off one plane, go through customs and find the domestic gate for the next flight.  When you see to gate 208 you realise how flipping big Shanghai airport is.  If it weren't for the China airline hostess guiding us through & a very fast walk I doubt we would have made it.

We finally got to bed at 4am Ozzie time after leaving at 9am the day before.  Lucky we didn't have to meet too early the next morning for our first day.  We had a leisurely breakfast before meeting up with the tour in the lobby at 10 am. It's a small group of only 18, all from Australia and around late 50s early 60s.  Our first stop was to the big Wild Goose Pagoda the main Buddhist temple here. It was built around 1300 years ago and looks very impressive, our first taste of Chinese culture.  Excerpt below with brief outline of this pagoda.

First built to a height of 60 meters (197 feet) with five stories, it is now 64.5 meters (211.6 feet) high with an additional two stories. It was said that after that addition came the saying-'Saving a life exceeds building a seven-storied pagoda'. Externally it looks like a square cone, simple but grand and it is a masterpiece of Buddhist construction. Built of brick, its structure is very firm. Inside the pagoda, stairs twist up so that visitors can climb and overlook the panorama of the city from the arch-shaped doors on four sides of each storey. On the walls are engraved fine statues of Buddha by the renowned artist Yan Liben of the Tang Dynasty. Steles by noted calligraphers also grace the pagoda.

As for the reason why it is called Big Wild Goose Pagoda, there is a legend. According to ancient stories of Buddhists, there were two branches, for one of which eating meat was not a taboo. One day, they couldn't find meat to buy. Upon seeing a group of big wild geese flying by, a monk said to himself: 'Today we have no meat. I hope the merciful Bodhisattva will give us some.' At that very moment, the leading wild goose broke its wings and fell to the ground. All the monks were startled and believed that Bodhisattva showed his spirit to order them to be more pious. They established a pagoda where the wild goose fell and stopped eating meat. Hence its name.

After that we went for a noodle lunch then to see a museum with 20 million other Chinese since today is a public holiday.  It would have been great if we could see much of the exhibits but there was so much jostling that we gave up.  We did get to see the terracotta warriors up close as they had a small exhibition there. To see the main one are either behind glass or away from the people but these you could get really close so that was worth it.  Next visit was to the city walls also first built around 1300 hundred years ago in the Tang Dynasty then improved upon in the Ming dynasty around  1368. They enclose the old city. The wall has a 14 km rectangular perimeter, is 12 metres tall and 12-14 meters wide at the top. It is one of the most complete city walls that has survived in China and one of the largest ancient military defence systems in the world.  You can hire a bicycle for $10 for a 2 hr ride right around the top.  If we had time we would have done that.

I had one of these once, but the wheels fell off

Xi'an is the beginning of the Silk Road which I think was one of the reasons to build the city wall. It was also the ancient capital of China before they changed it to Beijing. That night we had a special dumpling banquet followed by a traditional Tang Dynasty singing and dancing show. Jon was not looking forward to the show as he hates culture shows but this one was very good.  Costumes were very colourful and dancing was great especially my favourite the dance of a thousand hands when they have these long golden tips on their fingers and stand behind each other in a line but their arms are waving around.  Even Jon had to begrudgingly admit that he enjoyed it although the dumplings left a lot to be desired.

The next morning was the highlight of the trip, going to see the terracotta warriors. It dawned a lovely day and off we trotted along with approx 30,000 other visitors. It was unfortunately a public holiday so lots of people although I believe the average visitor count each and every day of the year is about the 30,000 mark.

There are 3 pits to see. Pit one contains most of the Warriors that are intact and shows them all lined up in the corridors made for them. It also contains the "hospital" where they are painstakingly put together. 

Pit 2 shows mostly the broken pieces how they were found with bits of bodies and horses that are yet to be put together. They looked as tho they had all been killed.

Pit 3 has some more complete warriors with some lined up behind horses. It also has glass cases with some warriors in them so you can see them close up. This was the smallest of the pits.  

When you walk in any of the pits you are above the excavation with a waist high wall all around it and a huge suspended roof up above. It takes awhile to work your way to the front but luckily most of them are short so I could hold my camera high and take a couple of shots.

A brief story about these guys. Emperor Ch'in (or Qin) was the first emperor of China and became emperor when he was 13 years old.  Back then China was divided into several kingdoms and by the time he died at 49 he had fought wars with them all, won and so unified all of China. It was from his name, Ch'in, that China got its name. He wanted to have a long life so asked his alchemist to make up a brew for him which he had every day. Unfortunately for him, it contained Mercury so ironically enough, the very thing that was meant to preserve him eventually killed him as he was slowly poisoned.

He started preparing for his tomb when he was 13 and at one point there were 700,000 people working on it.  It covers an area of 56 sq kms and they believe there is a lot more underground than what has already been recovered.  The warriors were put in long corridors, had wooden beams put above them then a roof over the top with soil on top of them and were sealed in.  From what I could understand, several years after he died the enemy found them and torched the place, burning the wooden beams causing the roof to collapse and so destroying the army inside.  I don't think there were many left intact, the kneeling archer was one of them tho.

Fast forward to 1974, a couple of farmers were digging for a well and instead found the warriors. They reported it to the government and the rest is history. So far they have dug up around 4,000 of them and believe there are at least another 4,000 still buried. As there is no record of this tomb or what lies underneath (as he had killed anyone who had anything to do with it, especially the poor folk who built the warriors) it had remained a secret for over 2,000 years. An amazing story.

After this we went to the first of a long line of factories. This one was a ceramics one and showed us how the terracotta warriors were made.  It was then time to fly to Beijing to meet up with the rest of the group.

Beijing

We finally got in to the hotel around 1-1.30 am and crawled into bed after the long day. 2 am and the phone goes. It was Maureen saying they had just arrived and mum had had an accident. She had tripped  on the first step of the hotel and landed straight on her face on the tiles. I quickly got dressed and by the time I got down there the tour operator had organised a taxi to take us to the hospital. It was pouring with rain as David -the tour guide, me, mum and a hotel employee drove down one of the ring roads (there are 6 ring roads and a 7th due to be built giving a circumference of almost 1,000 kms to the city) to find a hospital. We eventually got there only to be told there were no doctors there to treat her. If she had hurt her arm or leg or anything else it would be fine but as she has cut her lip which was bleeding very badly we had to go to the university hospital where they could treat her. So off in another taxi for another 30 mins to the next hospital which was fortunately very good and they took her straight away. 16 or so stitches later we made it back to the hotel at 4am to finally get a couple of hours sleep before another big day.

The hotel were very good and paid for everything although they did try and get some money out of her before she left but they obviously had never dealt with my mother before!

The next day we organised a wheelchair as there was going to be a lot of walking and it was still pouring with rain. We first went to Tienanmen Square which happened to be just two days after their big 70 year celebrations of beating Japan which had the square closed for over a week and it had only opened the day before so we were lucky. When I saw the square, all I could really think about was the tanks and the soldiers killing the students but obviously that is never mentioned.

From there it was a bit of a hike to the Forbidden City. I was the first to push the chair then Jon pushed it around the square but Malcolm took over for the rest of the time and did a marvellous job. Jon was dressed in his bright yellow raincoat which was great as no one lost sight of him then and we all decided he had to wear it for the rest of the trip. It really started to pour down in all seriousness by now so we were all a little wet and it's all outside.

The Forbidden City was huge and seemed to go on and on. I think it was built during the Ming dynasty and took 16 years to build, can believe it after walking through it. It also housed, beside the emperor and empress, over 3,000 concubines. A very busy emperor indeed.  We walked into the first square then climbed up lots of stairs, not easy with a wheelchair, to a large building which was mostly just a roof and big veranda then had to climb down the stairs, cross a huge square then repeat the process a couple of times. We eventually walked through a garden and came out the other side of the city through a gate in the high walls. To think the last Emperor never came out of there & lived his whole life behind that wall would kinda depress me although it was a large area to live in.

After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven which is where the emperors would come to offer sacrifices for a good harvest. It is one of the best examples of Ming dynasty architecture according to our guide and was pretty impressive.

That night we went to another show called The Golden Mask Dynasty. This was choreographed by the same guy who oversaw the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and I would have to say it was pretty amazing. The stage was built over water and the floor would slide back revelling the water for boats to go across, walls would slide over the stage and parts of the stage would rise up. At one point it became a huge rock wall and water started pouring over it like a big waterfall, depicting a flood. This water came straight at us and as we were in the front row I thought we would drown. Big grates at our feet managed to catch the water and drain most of it but the floor was still covered in water by the end of the show and had to be swept away. The dancing was also amazing with their bodies contorting into impossible positions.

Sunday morning was my next highlight of the trip, we were off to see The Great Wall at Juyong Guan Pass. Before we got there they took us to a jade factory where they showed us how they carved it, how to distinguish between good jade and cheap jade then showed us how to open our wallets and spend freely in their show room as we will never come across such bargains again.  After the wall visit we went to a cloisonné factory where particularly the same thing happened.

The making of the Cloisonné ware

Couple of large jugs!

But the wall was another matter. We were in a mountainous area which was very scenic and there was the famous wall disappearing over the rugged slopes just like in the postcards. We all climbed the first lot of stairs and had our group photos showing us on the wall but there were many more stairs to come and all of varying heights. Some were only one block high, some were two and quite a few were three blocks high which made for a very large step. I kinda thought that you walked up some stairs then walked along the top of the wall, like a castle wall but no, at least not in this part. There was no top, just a lot of stairs climbing up the Mountain. Every now and then there was a turret were you could take a break. Mum only made it up the first lot of stairs, everyone else did the second lot, I went up the third lot which nearly killed me and only Malcolm made it up to as far as you could go in the time-frame allowed which was a big effort. The view where I got to was amazing and I must admit I was in awe at the very fact that here I was standing on the Great Wall of China and gazing over the scenery.  It was harder to climb down as it is so steep and the steps are so deep but I made it down in time for an ice cream with the others while we waited for Malcolm. I can't imagine having to walk the entire 6700 kms or so let alone building it.

After the Cloisonné factory we went back into town to the Summer Palace, the largest preserved ancient garden garden in China and a former summer resort for the emperors. It has a large lake with gardens and buildings around the foreshore with dragon boats sailing across the lake. It was a lovely time of the evening as the sun was low in the sky giving a lovely light and it was so warm and balmy.

Monday morning was not such an early start, think we left around 9 am to go to the Chinese herbal institute, owned and run by the government for the government employees but tourist were allowed to visit as they had the opportunity to fleece them of lots of money. It started off nice enough with a lecture on Chinese medicine and how they have a holistic approach to healing but they train for 7 years in Chinese medicine then another 3 in western style then some more in something else so they have around 11 years of training. He said what sort of natural herbs and veges can help control certain conditions such as celery is good for high blood pressure and pumpkin is good for diabetes. Then all these tubs of hot water came out and we all soaked our feet in this special herbal mixture to help detoxify our bodies then everyone got at least a half hour foot massage. Everyone that is except me & Roger as there didn't seem to be enough students. When it came to our turn we barely got 10 minutes as everyone else had finished and had left. They said that it was optional to tip, if you felt they had done a good job but when I refused to tip because I didn't get even half of what everyone else got she was very snappy and was insisting on a tip. In the end she stalked off. So much for optional tipping. During this time a Dr came around and looked at people's hands for a few minutes then 'diagnosed' their condition then prescribed the Chinese medicine that would fix it.  It wasn't cheap, for a months supply it started off at around $180 minimum. People who sat by Jon spent at least $2000 but we heard of another couple who spent over $6,000! Talk about a con job. Didn't even get a good massage out of it.

After that we were off to the zoo to see the panda bears. It is a large zoo but we didn't get time to see the other parts,just the bear enclosures. As it turns out these were quite big. The first building we went into had three enclosures with just one bear in two of them, doing nothing except lying around. One bear walked a bit then lay in his bamboo bed. The next building had one bear in this huge enclosure, he was playing with his ball and having a great time. Just outside of this building was an outdoor enclosure with two cute younger bears and yet another large enclosure had another bear hoeing into his dinner of bamboo leaves rather enthusiastically. It was a great exhibit and they did look rather cute.

The last item for the day was a Hutong tour which are the old alleyways of Beijing, one of the few areas they hadn't torn down for the Olympics. We chose not to do this tour so were dropped off in town on Wangfujing which is a very upmarket shopping area. It had all the name shops like Prada and several big shopping malls. We had all split up by now, Roger & Maureen, mum & I thought we would go to the silk markets which were only 10 mins away but we could not find a taxi to take us there, for some reason they just refused so we got an ice cream from Dairy Queen then walked down where all the street vendors had set up their food stores along the street. They were selling all sorts of things on a stick like scorpions, silk worms, frogs, snakes, millipedes, tarantulas, sea horses, star fish and anything else that crawls and can be stuck on a stick. I did try some food but only safe stuff such as little pancakes, an octopus on a stick and deep fried bananas.

Man eating tarantula

This itinerary doesn't sound much for a day but the traffic is so horrific that it takes hours to go just a few kilometres so we ran out of time to do anything else.