29 March
Xian is a beautiful city of about 3 million. At it’s center is the old walled city. The wall is huge, about 80 feet wide on the top and even wider at its base. It is a huge square over two miles on each side and there are four large main gates at each cardinal direction.
We are met by Angela who will be our guide for the next few days. First on everyone’s list is to check into the hotel and get a shower. The Meihua-Goldentang is a very nice hotel and it is near the center of the “old city”. After breakfast, we tour Xian and in the afternoon ride bikes around the top of the old wall; everyone seemed to enjoy riding at their own pace, it was fun. In the evening we had a sort of Chinese Dinner Theater; a meal followed by a “light opera”.
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We arrive in Xian at 7:45 and are able to go to our hotel for breakfast and a wash up. We head out to the museum of Shaanxi province and it contains some of the original terra cotta warrious. Xian was an important capital for several dynasties – most particularly the Tang. After the museum we had a Chinese lunch, then went to the wall around the old city of Xian. We biked it (9 miles). The original walls encompassed 30 square miles of Xian in the Tang dynasty. Xian was the eastern origin of the Silk Road which was so important in the 13th to the 15th centuries that people from around the world came here to set up trading stations including Arabic Muslims. Xian is home to a fairly large number of Chinese Muslims today.
Fran
30 March
It is 5:30am and I’m wide awake. Seems like a good time to go for a run on the old city wall. It is cool and I get some stares since I’m in running shorts and a tee-shirt. The top of the wall doesn’t open until 8am so I run around the base of it in a wonderful linear park. There are hundreds of mini-exercise areas and all are filled. It is barely daylight and thousands of Chinese, mostly older, are out for some type of exercise. Some are playing ping-pong or badminton, many are walking and there are dozens and dozens of Tai-Chi groups, most of these have recorded music, but sometimes one or more of them is chanting and one group had a guy playing a flute. Especially different, four old men at different places were going through a slow drill using old military swords. One of the men, maybe in his mid-eighties, was wearing an old Chinese Army hat with the red star front and center. He gave me a quick but penetrating glance. I gave him a hand salute and he immediately came to attention. Then he brought his sword to the center of his body with the point straight up, returning my salute. He was kind of hunched over, but looked straight ahead without expression. I ran on, wondering what stories this old soldier could tell; was he in Mao’s Army, had he fought against the Japanese invasion, in the 30’s and 40’s or maybe against the Nationalist Chinese. If only I could communicate with him.
Today will be special. We are going to visit the museum and excavation site of the Terra-Cotta Warriors. This is one of the highlights of our entire trip and we have all been looking forward to it. The Chinese in this area call it the “Eighth Wonder of the World”.
About an hour’s drive from Xian we pass the Mausaleum, then, a few hundred meters away is the site of the Terra-Cotta Warriors. It consists of many large buildings which preserve the excavation area and display the thousands of treasures found there. Site one has hundreds of the, larger than life, warriors standing in long columns. I estimated about 600 in one formation. To date, they have excavated about 7,000 warriors and horses. Most were broken and had to be “reassembled”. It is thought that the emperor, had 700,000 people work for 38 years to have this pottery army protect him in the after-life. Every warrior is a bit different and they reflect all ranks and specialties such as infantry, cavalry, archers, etc. Oddly enough, Chi’s son inherited the throne and he had all the experts killed to preserve the secrets they had discovered. They had learned to make mercury and chrome 3,000 years before the rest of the world figured it out. Additonally, about one year after the father’s death, one of the generals led a revolt, crushed the son’s followers and declared himself the new emperor. There was such rage and resentment that the uprising forces broke into the tomb of the father, breaking and burning 37 years of work.
Fast forward now to 1974, a poor Chinese farmer is digging a well on his property and uncovered a terra-cotta soldier’s head. He was only given 30 Yuan (now that is worth about $2, probably more in 1974). The farmer continued to live in obscurity until President and Mrs Clinton visited. Before the visit to the excavation site, the President asked if he could meet the farmer. Government officials found him and gave him a “crash course” in English. He learned to say “How are you” then he would wait for a response and say “Me too” thinking that would suffice when the President said “I’m fine and you?”. But, the farmer got a little confused and when he spoke to the President he said “Who are you?” Surprised, Clinton said “What?” and the farmer repeated, “Who are you”. Clinton said, “I’m Hillary’s husband” and the farmer replys, “Me too”. Of course this made world news and the farmer became a local hero. He now signs books and pictures of the warriors and has made enough to live well and donate to a local charity.
Angela gets us to the train station in time for the 8:16pm departure. Having had no dinner and not wanting to trust our fate to the train, we check-in and some of our group watch the baggage while others get “take-out” from the McDonalds across the street from the station. All seemed to appreciate this diversion. The train is great, our compartments are clean and comfortable. We still have 4 berth compartments, but they are so much nicer than our last train that most are pleased. This train is even smoother, I sleep well.
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Today we get to see the terracotta warriors. There are more than 8000 figures; somewhere between 6 and 7000 have been unearthed. They are a bit larger than life-sized (for that time), and they were all vividly painted, although after exposure to the atmosphere the paint quickly faded to the point that we really wouldn’t know they ever were. Some of the figures which have been removed to a museum are being repainted to show the original colors. What surprised me was the huge buildings built over the pits to protect the excavation pits. The work to resotre this place is amazing. This has truly been a high light of the trip. Fran