Xi'an: Day 1: City Walls, Terracotta Warriors, Tang Dynasty Show

Our tour group got a late start this morning, leaving the hotel, the Grand Mercure, at 10:30am. Too bad, as I wanted to start earlier to pack in a full day exploring.

I took many picture and movies this day. My friend D, however, took even more. The latter link goes to the first picture in her set for the day; the day's pictures end with a series of blurry pictures of people roller-skating at night. When you hit a day-time picture of Shaanxi History Museum, you've gone too far. (That picture begins Xi'an day two, which I'll link to in my next post.)

After breakfast at the hotel (a pretty extensive buffet), we went to see Xi'an's ancient city walls. The current walls, one of China's oldest surviving city walls, were built mainly in the 14th century using clay, glutinous rice (!), lime, and more.

From the city walls, we drove on new roads past a shiny university to our lunch place, which happened to be near the tombs we'd visit in the afternoon. Tall mountains were in the distance. On the way, I saw a downed electrical line across the road.

Our lunch restaurant was nicely decorated (attractive alcohol bottles, pretty lanterns) and the food was good, though overwhelming in quantity.

After lunch, we headed to the mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, made famous because of the numerous roughly-life-sized statues of warriors buried with him. I've already written about how impressive his terracotta army is. At the site, we first went to a minor tomb / museum, then moved to the major mausoleum and display. In the first tomb, I learned that some of the mausoleum remains unexcavated; the Chinese are waiting until preservation techniques improve before opening additional warriors to the air. The guide also had a little fun here, saying that because some of the tomb remains unexcavated, some of the legends about the tomb may still be true; for instance, the tomb is supposed to have a river of mercury.

I also learned that researchers found, in a old kiln nearby, the molds for the general body shapes of the terracotta warriors.

Properly anticipating excitement, we entered the major mausoleum. We really did save the best for last. It's an aircraft-hangar-like space that's filled with an unfathomable array of terracotta warriors. There's freaken' lots of them. (Okay, it's fathomable -- I looked it up: there are over ten thousand of them.) See the pictures.

We visited the gift shop. It sells replicates of the warriors in various sizes, up to and including full-size. Imagine having one of those in your house! The gift shop also had as a guest one of the farmers who discovered the tomb back in 1974. (Yes, it's a relatively recent discovery.) He signs books (about 3000/day I'm told) for 1 RMB each (about 15 cents), thus making the daily wage of 450 USD, which makes him quite wealthy by Chinese standards. (If he only worked five days a week and took vacations, he'd make around 90 thousand US dollars a year.) Though 80 years old, he looked happy and jaunty. Maybe that's caused by how much money he's earning?

Incidentally, on the way into the mausoleum, someone in my group (D?) observed the crowds and the ticket booths and the heat and commented this was "like a historic Disneyland". (The day was sunny and toasty, just like one gets in Florida in the summer.) This Disneyland observation turned out to be even more apt than I thought at the time. Later we found a set of warriors (presumably replicates) that you pose in the middle of and get your picture taken as a warrior. Sounds like some places in Disneyland. Also, on the way out, we passed through a wide-open tourism gauntlet of people selling miniature warriors, terracotta lighters, etc.

We then headed back to our hotel for some relaxation time before dinner. D and I wandered the hotel's grounds and found an art gallery in the basement. It had an assortment of good quality art: traditional paintings, silk embroidery (sometimes of paintings), impressionist paintings, lacquered wood carvings. The cross-hatching on some embroidery pieces made it feel as if the tree leaves were in motion.

For dinner, we had another excessive meal. I guess this is becoming the usual -- group tours have to over-order because they don't want anyone to go hungry, not even picky eaters.

After dinner, we went to Tang Dynasty Show (Tang Yue Gong), celebrating China's supposedly most prosperous dynasty. The show was like the opening to the Beijing Olympics, with similarly elaborate costumes and choreography, but just constrained by the size of the stage / number of people. It was a good show. I especially liked the backgrounds, especially the animated image of the moon. I also particularly appreciated the show's use of colored filters -- each performance had a different mood because of this. For details, see the pictures. (Cameras were allowed.)

The audience in China wasn't like audiences in the United States. People often talked during the performance and, at the end during the curtain call, no one clapped. Half the audience got up and left during the curtain call. Others waved. After the call, you could pay to go on the stage to be photographed with the performers.

Because it was a warm, comfortable evening and we weren't far from our hotel, D and I decided to walk back rather than take the bus. (Although we were outside the city walls and our hotel was in the center of the city, it wasn't a large distance, certainly less than two miles.) Our route took us past the flower district, the sign district, a line of barber shops, and maybe other groups of businesses as well.

We found a square park filled with roller-bladers, ripstik-ers, and more. Neat. There was a stand for renting these items. We were passed by trains of skaters. In general, it was filled with kids having fun.