I was woken up a little earlier than I planned by my driver, robin, because the lobby was too busy for him to find me in. He came up to my room so we could meet face to face then I had to rush to get ready and head down to meet him after checking out.

He was a nice guy who knew quite a bit about Xi’an. We talked about the city and how it compared to Beijing for a while until we saw a wedding procession driving past. Chinese weddings are celebrated differently than western ones. The big party is at lunch were everyone shows up and wishes the couple good luck. After lunch everyone leaves and dinner is a much smaller affair with close friends and family.

We first went to the terra cotta warrior factory… I mean museum. I felt like a superstar, robin pulled up right to the door and I hopped out and got to avoid the tourist line which was insanely long. He was able to get me an English speaking guide and they told me briefly how the warriors were first made and how they are made now. It was more of a shopping tourist trap deal than anything else. Since I was wearing a jeans and t-shirt though everyone thought I was a student and left me to my own devices.




After the museum we headed out to the actual warriors which are located a ways outside the city. Robin gave me a brief explanation of the layout of the museum and told me the optimal way to view it. With this information in hand I left the parking lot and started the 20 minute walk to the warriors.

It was a beautiful walk further reinforcing how much I liked Xi’an. As I got to the ticket booth I was right at the front of a large group of tour groups and there were two open lines. A middle-aged man, an older woman and I all started rushing for the two open ticket sellers. The man made it to one first leaving one open spot for the woman and me. We started running and as she zigged I zagged. At the last second I was able to get a shoulder in the opening and beat her to the seller by a couple of inches. I turned to give her a triumphant smile and she returned it with a spiteful glare. Her friend was laughing at her for getting beaten by a foreigner. I turned to the seller full of pride, reached in my pocket and realized I had left my wallet in my bag back in the car. Defeated I left my spot to the now gloating woman and went back to the car.

The museum is really large. There are 3 pits, a movie theater, an additional museum and a restaurant area. There also is a metal detector that you have to walk through to get in to the museum. This was the first I saw of this in China. I also realized that there was no one manning the detector. After passing through it I realized it was not even on. At least it is more honest than the TSA system which is basically the same thing.


I watched the circle movie first. It was pretty cool how the movie was filmed. The screens completely surrounded you and you had a 360 degree view. I am not sure how they filmed it; I kept imagining three or four cameras taped together all pointing in different directions. The movie went over the history of the emperor who created the warriors. He was the first to unify China and the first to build the Great Wall. He also set up the basic institutions for Chinese government that were in place until the revolution at the middle of the 20th century. All in all a bunch of impressive feats. He also decided to build an underground city for a tomb and the warriors are guarding this city. This tomb took 40 years to build which was actually longer than he lived.

After the movie I went into the first pit. There is where the majority of the warriors that have been uncovered are. It was pretty amazing. The place is massive and the soldiers are all lined up and restored for the most part. All of the detail on the warriors is unique so they have different faces and slight differences in clothing. There are a couple different groups of warriors and the way their hair is done is what differentiates them. So one knot is a regular soldier. Two is an officer and so on. There are also a lot of pits that remain to be excavated. They are waiting for better technology to help in preserving the warriors because the ones they have already excavated have lost most of the color in the paint that was on them.





















After the first pit I saw the third pit which was a much smaller pit. It was more of an honor guard I guess. From there I went on to the second pit which was pretty massive again. This was almost completely unexcavated though. So it just looked like a bunch of dirt. There were a couple of areas with some shards though which were pretty interesting. It is like a really difficult jigsaw puzzle. This pit also had really complete statues of each kind on display.



















The museum was next up. There were a couple of different exhibits. There was one of Tang dynasty pottery (tri-color pottery) which I really like. They had it for comparison to Qin dynasty artifacts. There was also some jade work from the Qin dynasty and the bronze chariots they found in front of the third pit. The bronze chariots were really cool. They were smaller but really fine detailing.

After finishing up in this museum I grabbed some ice cream and walked back to the parking lot. It was the perfect weather. Just my shoulder blades were hot. There was a nice breeze to keep you cool but the sun was nice and warm. I love that combination of weather and could walk forever like that.





I also found a shortcut heading back to the parking lot by following a group through a construction area. When we first entered a couple of people walked towards us and I thought they were going to tell us that you could not walk through this area and to turn around. Nope they just wanted to try to sell us some junk. I forget sometimes that I am in China and I should expect you can go wherever you want and wherever you go someone will be there trying to sell you some trinket.





The ride back to the airport was really interesting. We drove on all local roads and got to go through some of the more rural areas outside of Xi’an. Most of the pictures I took did not really turn out but it was cool seeing a non-citified version of China. To be honest though I did not take my eyes of the street for the first 30 minutes. All driving rules go out the window outside of the city. Double yellow lines are a suggestion that is ignored frequently. As are almost all sense of lanes. There was one point where there was a truck, us, five bikes and a car going in the opposite direction all in parallel on the road.

After I got to the airport I went to the airport buffet for the first food I ate all day. I am getting too used to the prices here. The buffet was 60 quai for food and all the beer you could drink. Even with the free beer the buffet was pretty weak with most foods being chronically gone. I kept feeling like I was getting ripped off but then kept reminding myself that 60 quai is 7.50. The beer alone would have cost more in the States (but not here leading to my sense of getting ripped off)

After getting back I got in the ridiculous taxi line and watched some guy get chased down buy the guards and hauled off. It was pretty exciting even though I had no real idea what was going on. Instead of going home though I met up with Brian and Hua in Sanlitun for drinks and dinner. We went to the tree and had many pizzas. Hua and I decided to go to Cambodia for the May holiday here so now we are in the process of getting tickets and setting that all up.

After the tree we went to browns to get a Guinness then we went to get a foot massage. After that we went to the bus bar which is a bus that has been converted into a bar. It also is the weed smoking haven for Beijing apparently. Brian and I decided that probably was not the best place to hang out as they tend to do things like execute you for drug possession here so we went to another bar and had some drinks till they closed. Overall a very full day.