Xi'an, China - Terra Cotta Warriors

On Aug 5th we left our "home sweet condo" in Singapore and headed for Xi'an, China. We had some flight delays that were less than ideal, but we got there with no real problems. I was a little bit worried about changing plans in Guangzhou, but it turns out that happens to be the 3rd largest city in China (12M people) so we had no problems. Our tour guide Jackie was waiting for us when we arrived at baggage claim and all went smoothly.

The next day we set out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. As even the Chinese people say, "Beijing has a couple hundred years of history, Xi'an has a couple thousand years of history." It was truly fascinating. We took a TON of pictures. The detail and the craftsman ship on these warriors is amazing. Some of the kneeling down warriors were found almost in tact. That's incredible as well. Apparently two famers were out digging for a well during the 1970's and happened to dig up a head of one of the warriors. When the archiologists came, they eventually discovered 3 full "pits" of warriors. Some pits haven't been fully dug up yet, and I actually think that was good because it helped us understand how the whole thing was built. We were all so impressed that we bought the tour book AND one of the farmers that made the original discovery was there, and he signed our book. Really neat!!!

After the warriors, we headed to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. There is an acient Chinese story regarding why it's called that, but it's too much to write, so I'll leave that one for your googling pleasure. Buddist monks still live / pray here and we learned about the threshold step that kepts the bad spirits out. The higher the threshold, the more important the building and/or it's residents. All the dynasty buildings we toured had these high thresholds. In acient times, the women stepped over with their right foot first and the men stepped over with their left foot first. The neatest thing about the Pagoda is that it's slightly slanted - on purpose. Again, amazing for 100's of years ago, and that it's still standing!

Next we toured the Xi'an City Wall, complete with the moat and the drum tower (for telling time during the night) and the bell tower (for telling time during the day). The windows are were the guards would look out and be ready to shoot arrows at any approaching enemies. The boys thought that sounded like a fun job....

After a great day in Xi'an, it was off to the train station (which was NOT a highlight of the trip but we won't focus on that....) to catch our overnight train to Beijing!