Xian: 9-12 Sep 2013

Pete at the Terracotta Warriors

Rach says:

Xian was more of a necessary stop-off for us on the 24 hour journey to Chengdu, rather than somewhere we particularly wanted to visit and we arrived feeling city-weary to a vast grey place of huge buildings in thick polluted bad weather. Apart from the vast city walls, it seemed not to have much to recommend it. We arrived at the hostel at 6am, exhausted from our 8 hour train journey in a hard seat, to be given the dirtiest stinking damp room in the
hostel. So we had an hour's kip on the sofas whilst they found us another room, but not until I had gone FLYING down some stone steps and into a stone block.  It was a real "Oh my God" moment and I was seeing broken bones. Luckily I escaped with a strained hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, side and the mother of all lumps on my forearm. Clumsy oaf.

We took a trip to see the Terracotta "Worriers" as advertised by our hostel :-) They guard the tomb of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who unified China and started building the Great Wall. It took 720,000 people 4 decades to build his tomb and the warriors...quite impressive facts. His actual tomb apparently contains rivers of mercury and lots of booby traps and archaelogists have said it is too dangerous to explore. There was more hilarity to be had from our Chinese guide, who we barely understood, who seemed to be giving a very thorough commentary on the "Terracotta Walrus", which we didn't manage to spot ourselves. Apparently "one chariot hold three walrus" - so they must have been strong ;-)  I liked seeing the rows of warriors that they are piecing together. Originally they were all painted, but when excavated the paint evaporates in seconds so there are whole areas untouched until they can work out how to preserve it. We also made the obligatory 'money-spending' stop at a factory that replicates the warriors, where we seriously (kind of!) considered the purchase of a life-size warrior for the garden back home (or to guard the front door haha!).

Bits n bobs...

• Shops with such comedy names as "Sheman" and "Jiggle Studios"
• We are really losing track of the days - have to really concentrate to work out what day of the week it is since there is no work as a point of reference (yay!).
• I have never seen so many tower blocks and construction in my life - the Chinese are throwing them up, 6-8 blocks at a time. There are cranes everywhere.

Pete says:

The train to Xian was a gruelling 8 hours overnight on a "hard seat" and after the initial excitement of how busy and lively the train was, the novelty soon wore off...

Xian is a huge dirty city with massive tower blocks - all of them almost empty, as though they are pretending to be prosperous. Massive shopping centres, posh shops and even Lambourghini dealerships, so there must be some rich people about.

After the Terracotta Warriors trip we went to a little kiosk to buy train tickets for the next steps of our journey and there were two girls from Chile doing the same. They had been on the same trip that day and we had a chat and ended up going out for drinks down "bar street" that night. They were called Anais and Ornelia and we had a good time haggling for drink prices and getting a bit drunk together. Anais gave me her email and we have been getting advice from each other from time to time on our travels.

Out with Anais and Ornelia from Chile

We got a lift back to Xian station in a tuk tuk. Like a motor trike with a rickety metal box stuck on the back and no doors! In a massive thunderstorm as the crazy driver lady weaved through the insane traffic, sometimes at right angles or even head on to other traffic, it was quite a ride!

Wild tuk-tuk ride!