This day was CRAZY busy. We visited two factories, the Xi'An Museum & Gardens and MOST important, the Terracotta Soldiers!! More...
Our long day began with a trip to a jade factory. There were SOOOO many beautiful carvings!! A lady taught us about colour, translucency, density, and hardness when judging the value of jade.
Of course you had the opportunity to shop for something at the end, but 99% of the really desirable things are unaffordable to someone like me.
Next we visited the Xi'An Museum. The grounds were absolutely lovely. Small artisan shops populated one portion of the grounds.
The Wild Goose Pagoda (709 A.D.) is a highlight ona walk around the grounds.
The Museum had displays of ancient jade, Buddhas, and carvings & tiles from various Chinese dynasties.
Next stop was the only place which is licensed to make copies of the terracotta statues. A gentleman (who was the exact size of one of the half sized warriors) showed us how the soldiers WERE and are NOW made.
This factory also made figurines of dragons and Chinese zodiac animals but also sold jade figures, Painted inside out vases and so on.
Finally... the highlight of the day... we went to see the actual soldiers. We learned of the farmer who discovered the site when he was digging a well.
This was TERRIBLE bad luck for HIM because the government only paid him 30 yuan ($5-6) for his farm. With his source of income gone, his family was destitute for 20 years.
When he was interviewed on Chinese TV and people realized how poorly he'd been treated, they gave him a job signing tourist books in a shop at the site.
No pictures allowed of him but I did take a picture inside the store (Roberta "window-shopping").
The excavated area would cover MANY football fields. They said three, but I'd guess more like 4 or 5. Pit one contains a multitude of soldiers.
I hadn't realized that only ONE soldier has thus far been found undamaged. The rest have been pieced together and replaced into their original spots.
TONS of soldiers are towards the back of that building, all in the process of being pieced back together. All the bodies (of the same rank) are very similar to one another but the faces are quite different.
It is amazing to see the thousands of figures, realize there are thousands more waiting to be unburied and put back together.
When you see where Mr. Yang was digging his well, you will see how amazing it is that the army of figures was found at all.
Three feet in another direction and nothing would have been discovered at all. Also amazing... these warriors and the Great Wall... created by an emperor so harsh, the people celebrated his death (by poisoning).
Qin (pronounced Chin) was also where China got its name... go figure!
The on site museum contains an example of every type of warrior (general, archer, political figure, cavalry, etc.) as well as some of pieces that still retain a bit of colour.
As soon as pieces are exposed to air, the paint oxydizes and they have not yet found a way of preserving the colours except for a short time.
The bronze chariots are also displayed there. Pit two is not excavated much but there you can see the roof that was burnt away (pit 1) by angry crowds of slave labour once Qin had died.
Pit 3 has several figures but is much smaller than the other two areas.
Before we left, I went into Pit 1 for one last look. I met FenFen who took my picture (an me hers) and gave me a bit more information about the site. Thanks Fen Fen!
We went back to Xi'An for dinner and had a good view of the illuminated city walls from in front of that restaurant.
