Xi'An The Terracotta Warriors

We started our day in Xi'An at the Banpo River Village. This is an archialogical dig of a village that is 6000 years old. It is one of the oldest excavations in the world and shows an amazing amount of sophistocation on the part of these ancient people. The village had a moat dug around it to protect the inhabitants from wild animals at night. There was a trench dug from their latrine away from the water source indicating they had at least some knowledge of health issues from human waste. They had huge kilns in which they fired all kinds of pottery, even the earliest known porceline. My photos from there were very bad so I didn't include any here.

Our next stop was the Terracotta Warriors. Since it was National Day, our guide estimated there were at least 30,000 people there when we were. Many of them were foreigh tourists. But most of them were Chinese tourists on holiday to visit one of thier country's greatest treasures. Many looked at us with interest because they came from even more remote places than Xi'An and had not seen many Westerners.

Several things were particularly striking to me. First the size of the dig. It is at least three football fields under roof in the main pit where 6000 warriors are burried. When the warriors are first excavated they still have the vivid colors painted on them 2200 years ago. Unfortunately the color fades shortly after being exposed to air. So, they are not excavating any more until they can figure out a way to keep the color from fading.

The sheer size of this building was a real surprise to me.

This is how they found many of the warriors when initially excavated. But as you can see they have reconstructed many of them and left them as they would have been first burried.

There are three pits that have been excavated so far. However, they have identified 183 more pits that have something burried in them. They are in the process of acquiring all the land that runs from Pit #1 to the burial mound of the Emperor who did all this, the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. They intend to excavate all of the pits in the future but have to gather funds to cover the costs and are hoping to have the issue of the paint fading solved before they start work on new pits. There are going to be some incredible finds in the future. It will be interesting to watch what comes out of the new pits.

Xi'An was an interesting town of 7 million people. Being there on a holiday meant it was extremely busy on the streets and in the shops. They had a huge mall of sorts that ran two full blocks square and at least five stories. The shops inside were more like booths in a Mexican mercado. But you could buy anything within those walls. Everything from appliances and water heaters to baby booties. And, boy was it crowded! Another place where I got the sense of just how many people there are in China.

This is the only place I saw what I had expected to see everywhere. . .mothers pulling down the pants of their toddlers to let them pee on the sidewalk. The child I saw was none too happy about doing it right there on the sidewalk in front of hundreds of people but her mom won. They calmly pulled up the pants and went on their way when the child was done, leaving a puddle right in the middle of the sidewalk. We curb our dogs here but they don't even try to curb their children there. Actually I was glad to see it because I had expected to see it more often.

Xi'An is also where I got very familiar with this type of toilet. This is a clean one. At the Terracotta Warriors Mary and I skipped the privledge of using their facilities because they were sooooooo gross. Also, just in case you need this info in the future, take your own toilet paper. None is provided by the management.