Day 6 X’ian Terracotta Warriors
When you have a population the
size of China’s you do things a little differently, cars drive on the road
using China rules – often they just decide the queue is too long and drive in
the other lane which is okay until they meet oncoming traffic, in which case they it work out with a lot of horn blowing.
They smoke, drink and eat while
riding a moped with their children perched precariously behind, with no
headlights (because they’re all electric and they want to conserve their
battery) and no helmet. Henry says that a helmet = wuss in China.
Everyone appears to have a job, unemployment is very low according to Henry. It might be
cleaning the streets and parks of leaves (nightmare job in Autumn), or holding
the door open as you walk into a shop. We saw some factory workers today hunched
over slabs of clay making imitation terracotta warriors. I swear they were
sitting on milk bottle crates and it was so cold, I do not know how they were
making their hands do that fine work. We had the obligatory factory
tour/tourist shop gauntlet run (don’t make eye contact with the shop
assistants!) and some fun outside the factory before getting back in the (in/out, in/out - did I mention exhausting) before next stop - Terracotta Warriors.
They did not disappoint.
Above is Pit #1
These guys are 200 years older
than Jesus and were discovered when some local farmers were digging a well.
Poor farmers – no well for you.
Once the authorities knew what they’d
unearthed (apparently it took a while for the small fragments the farmers originally found to register as a significant archaeological event) in
typical Chinese style all digging was halted until this massive structure could
be built to protect the site. The building covering pit 1 is itself astounding.
Somewhat romantically I thought of
the warriors, who were created to protect an Emperor’s tomb. The tomb covers 56
square kms (a guy who had big tickets on himself) as being unearthed
like this. Standing erect in their rows ready for anything.
After being buried for 22
centuries they actually looked like this
and have been painstakingly pieced
together on the site.
As you know they are all unique,
no one face alike, and they were placed facing the direction from which the
enemy was expected, walls built around them a wooden rafter roof on top of them
and then sealed the gate.
Environmental forces have affected the
ground level throughout their time underground so the rebuilt warriors appear taller than the roof but in their
day the roof would have been over their heads, at the height of the beams you can see above the gate, like this ...
Amazingly some of the artifacts
were found completely intact, horses and all, and the colours! Even after all that time. Today we can only see the colours in pictures taken by the archaeologists as they recorded the original dig. It did not take long, once released from their hibernation, for oxidization to dissolve the brilliance. To preserve them much of the uncovered has been re-buried.
The scale of this tomb has to be
seen to be believed and this tendency to do things on a big scale is still part
of the Chinese culture – no matter how daunting the task there is no shying away from it.
After spending the day with the old guys, in a fine example of 'and now for something completely different', we spent the evening in the Muslim Quarter. What a feast for the senses!
The colours
the smells (it was BBQ and smelt good even to me)
see below the garbage bin for collecting those eNORmous skewers that looked like they's been hewn directly and recently from a tree and we speculate that they may be ... um ... recycled for tomorrow's customers.
Despite the tempting smells we didn't risk eating street food although I did have some candied hawthorn, and sweet Nelly Melba was it good! I wish I could have bought some home for you but it would make it through customs, no seal, no ingredients list :( great experience though.
good night my sweet cherubs, kisses to you all.
