Today we visited the Terra-cotta Warriors of the Qin
dynasty. The area was a designated tomb
for the emperor in the year 200 BC. At
13 years old, the emperor decided that he wanted an entire city, and a legion
of soldiers buried with him to protect him in the afterlife. The tomb area is a total of 54km2
and contains the largest pyramid, by area, on earth. Within this area the emperor had buried clay
statues of an entire lifesize army, including headquarters. It took 38 years to complete, and was finally
finished two years after the emperor’s death.
The warriors, however, were only found in 1974 by a farmer digging a
well. No mention of such a thing was
ever written in the official record of the time, so this find was a complete
surprise. The scale and number of this
army is extraordinary. What’s more
wondrous is the sheer audacity of the vision to have this built. I wonder what we would tell our 13 year-old
kids now if they had asked for anything like this?
We had our chance to visit a factory where they make
replicas of these statues, with the option to buy later, of course. I have to say, the Chinese are amazing sales
people. Some of you will be getting
great gifts.
Throughout all of this, it was easy to see the pride that
the Chinese people place in their ancient history. It’s difficult for us, as Canadians, to
relate to something so old and ancient, as an artifact of our own personal history. The Great Wall, the old city of Xi’an, the
tombs and the Forbidden City, (which we’ll see tomorrow) were built not only to
provoke awe, but stand the test of time for the descendants of an entire
people.
After this we went to an art museum back in the city of
Xi’an, where we got to try our hand at calligraphy using paint and
brushes. The curator gave us some
lessons on basic calligraphy and had all of us actually try and paint
some. Some of them weren’t bad. It allowed everyone to see the complexity and
inner meaning of several Chinese characters.
Finally, after a long day of sight-seeing, it was time to make
our way to the train station for our overnight trip to Beijing. The sheer number of people in the station was
nothing like we had ever seen. There
were people from corner to corner. Our
guides (who by the way, are nothing short of amazing and knew the best way to
navigate our group through this maze) had already loaded our luggage earlier in
the day so that we wouldn’t have to deal with it. A very wise move. I can’t imagine the chaos there would have
been if we had had our luggage with us as well.
They had purchased subway sandwiches for all of us (yes Subway), and
expertly navigated us through the station and onto the train.
We were given sleeper cabins, with 4 beds to a room in 2
cars. Apparently, these were the
absolute top of the line cars on the trains.
Other cars only had seats, and even several were standing room
only. Imagine, standing all night long
in a crowded train car. We were told
that train tickets are so scarce, that people can camp out for up to a week at
the ticket windows to get a ticket, or if they’re lucky, purchase a scalped
ticket from someone else. Our guides had
actually purchased an extra ticket for some lucky person to share their cabin
with. Generous indeed.
Our train left Xi’an at 7:30pm, travelled all night, and
arrived in Beijing at 6:30am. Most
everyone fell asleep instantly. What a
day it was.
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