We flew from Lhasa to Xi'an - another small city of 7 million people in central China - to do a whistle-stop tour of its most famous tourist attraction - The Army of Terracotta Warriors. The lifesize warriors were built 2000 years ago by an Emperor in order to protect him and his tomb in the afterlife. The were discovered in the 1970s by a farmer digging a well. The place has been excavated in 3 main sites. Pit#1 is the largest, with over 6000 Warriors housed inside. Pit#2 has about 1000 and Pit#3 has only about 68 Warriors. Each pit is in different states of restoration. They have basically tried to piece the warriors together as they believe they were originally built - a long process with each battalion separated by supporting walls (thought to hold up a roof) . The cool thing about them is that they each have different facial features and costume. Apparently, they also carried different bronze weapons which survived (although not on display). There are conspiracy theories that the Terracotta Warriors are not as old as they have been made out to be and possibly even built as a tourist attraction! From all the restoration going on it is hard to really know which is true, but when we were in Lijiang, Yunnan, I met an Italian woman who was an archeologist doing collaborative work of other interest in China, but she did say that these Warriors have been proven to be authentic. Regardless, I have to agree that they were pretty impressive and really interesting to see and it was worth the trip North.
We didn't care too much for Xi'an itself - a big city, unfortunately, with its few remaining 2000 year relics generally hidden. There was a smog lurking over the city too and we weren't impressed with the big modern parades of shops such as Prada, Louis Vitton etc. After just 24 hours in the city we were ready to head on. Just as we were leaving the hostel we met an old travel companion, Lisa from Australia, who had helped us at the hospital in Zhongdian about 6 weeks ago, and THEN, at the train station, we saw Andy - a Canadian friend we had met many months ago in Laos and then Cambodia! How crazy is that! It was only after seeing these friends that we seriously wished we were staying longer in Xi'an. It's SO nice to see people you know when you're on the road, and we were bummed. *Mush
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