Day 13 - Xian, China - Terracotta Warriors

Day  13 – Hers

The overnight ‘hard’ sleeper train was quite an experience.  Tory gathered us together at the hotel and spent the next 25 minutes trying to hail 3 taxis in rush hour to take us to the station. That little task finally accomplished, we assembled again at Beijing West train station, went through two sets of security gates and ticket checks. (It seems that somehow Rob’s train ticket showed an incorrect number for his passport and this caused a slight delay whilst Tory carried out negotiations....) We then had 45 minutes to wait before we could board the train.  Rob taught one of our Australian friends and Tory to play Gin Rummy and then Tory taught us a complicated game that was some sort of a combination of Hearts and Rummy, whilst around us throngs of people jostled themselves, their children and their luggage towards various long distance trains.  The train itself had at least 25 carriages, each with 12 sleeping compartments.  Each compartment had six bunks – 2 top, 2 middle and 2 bottom.  We had to learn the Chinese characters for top, middle and bottom to find our correct bed.  A quick switch with another of our group placed Rob and me in the same compartment with the 2 Australians from our group and a Chinese woman with her daughter.  There was very little room in the compartment to do anything but get into your bunk.  There was a small table – with large teapot provided – but it had already been commandeered by the Chinese woman who had brought a 4 course meal and snacks. There were also little tables with seats in the corridor – but they had also been commandeered by passengers from other compartments so Rob and I played cards and ate our dinner breads on my (bottom) bunk until just before lights out at 10:00.

The beds were not as hard as I had imagined and the train travelled at a good, smooth pace, so we managed a reasonable night’s sleep, awakening in time to make coffee with boiling water from the ‘boiler’ room, wash up in the washing room and stare out the window at the passing scenery for the last hour into Xi’an.

The hills are made of reddish earth, terraced, even where they aren’t cultivated.  The fields seemed to be mainly planted with corn. (I remembered that Tory had told us that as a child, her family’s diet had consisted mostly of corn: corn breads, corn soup, etc.) We also passed a family cemetery, with a painted gate and stone monument reminiscent of the offering boxes in the Forbidden City – but the most prevalent sights were construction projects: hundreds of huge blocks of flats springing up on both sides of the tracks.  Clearly, the pace of development here is very rapid indeed.  We were told later by our local guide ‘Jim’ that Xi’an is growing by 1 million people each year and that a 100 sq ft flat an hour away from Xi’an costs about £20,000, £200,000 inside the city. Young men must have a flat and a nice car (preferably BMW, said Jim – confirmed by Tory) if they are to find a wife, given that there are 4 boys for every girl in China. The average salary is only around £200 per month, so young men work very hard, often 6 or 7 days per week. ( Aside from Rob – even so 3 out of 4 of them have to become monks – or go off and find brides in Thailand or Africa!)

When we arrived at Xi’an, we assembled our luggage and squeezed through the crowds to the taxi queue.  The usual assortment of unofficial taxi drivers, tat sellers, etc. tried to pull us off course but we boldly shuffled along in the light mist until we reached the front of the taxi queue.  Bundled in to 3 taxis, we then set off through the impressive city walls and morning traffic for our hotel.  The route required a couple of tricky left-hand turns. There are few traffic lights here; to turn left, cars push into the traffic coming from the other direction and weave in and out as required, just as pedestrians do if they want to cross a crowd all headed into a football match. 

We were able to check into our hotel, but not go to our rooms, so the much needed showers had to wait.  We stored our luggage and set off almost straight away to see the Terracotta Warriors.  We stopped first at a factory that made models of the soldiers, plus traditional furniture and carpets, for the obligatory captive sales pitch that so often accompanies these sorts of outings (copper and emeralds in Santiago, carpets in Morocco, diamonds in Israel and South Africa).  Many of our group obligingly purchased sets of models and trinkets to store in their attics when they get home.  Rob explored the idea of purchasing a life-size warrior for our garden, exciting both the salesman and our guide (who undoubtedly gets a commission) but in the end just took a card so we can think about that idea again from a distance....  We then drove on for 20 minutes to see the warriors. 

The museum site is impressive.  Each of the sections open to the public is covered by a large building with viewing galleries and informative exhibits.  Several areas are still actively being worked by archaeologists – and 3 more sections are due to be opened in 2013. There is a 100 year plan to restore the entire site – only one small portion of the western army has so far been uncovered.  The emperor’s tomb in the centre and the armies of the three other compass directions have yet to be explored.  In addition to the main exhibits, there is a museum, a 360 degree cinema that depicts the creation, destruction and discovery of the warriors and – to complete the experience – shops at the entrance and exit to the site, where two of the farmers who first discovered the warriors in 1974 sign autographs. 

After about 3 hours of wandering through the site, gawping at the exhibits, we went to a local restaurant for a banquet.  There were 4 meat dishes, 4 vegetable dishes, rice, a noodle soup and the inevitable ‘cha’.  We couldn’t possibly eat it all.  The restaurant staff were very worried that we didn’t like the noodles, in particular.  They kept coming in and offering to serve us more.  Conversation was lively.  We had joined up for the day with a family group from Portugal whose son attends Southampton University and who have been travelling with Gecko through China for two weeks, including a 28-hour stint on one of the hard sleeper trains. Neither the son nor the 17-year old daughter had been impressed with this version of a family holiday – I can imagine similar reactions from James and Stephanie if we had attempted such a trip 5 years ago.

We arrived back at the hotel at about 5 o’clock and I don’t think anyone took Tory up on her offer of an evening out for dinner and a show.  We showered and collapsed.  Even the charming-looking little streets near our hotel can’t entice us out to explore.  An early night is definitely in order.  Weather permitting, we are to cycle along the city walls tomorrow – and tomorrow night is another journey on a hard sleeper train......

 

Day 13 – His

 Xi’ an is the ex capital and the saying here is if you want to see 200 years of history go to Shanghai, if you want to see 500 years of history go to Beijing and if you want to see 2,000 years of history go to Xi’an. The place is older than Christianity and ‘Jim’ is exceedingly proud of the place. Jim is a gun for hire local guide and as such he clearly has a lot of local agreements in place and some very definite places he wants to drag us. I have no problem with this – too many years of travelling have made Patti and me relatively immune to high pressure sales techniques, but not the others on our tour judging by the amount of miniature terracotta they bought. But then, they are here for a few weeks and we are here for months and the last thing we want to do is drag lumps of clay around with us for the next few months.

The life size warriors are a thing in themselves and it is difficult to conceive of the mentality that prompted their construction. I believe it was the first emperor that ordered their creation. They say he did four main things – created the great wall, unified China, built 700 palaces and created the terracotta army and in order to do so he killed 2 million people. About 10% of the population of china at the time. So, impressive in both the legacies he left and the decimation he caused in order to leave it. Apparently he had 3,000 wives which he had buried alive with him – not such a good idea to be a concubine i think – i must remind Patti of this! – He also executed the 250,000 workers who worked on the project in order to maintain the secret and a further 250,000 died in its completion from over work. I am constantly amazed by people. Both the scope of the emperors dream and the apparent willingness of the half a million who died in order to complete it and their apparent willingness to die for something so, admittedly marvellous, but pointless. But that’s my own politics showing.

 China is vast. What that means is that in order to see any of it, long journeys are inevitable. So, we have another train journey tomorrow which are adventures in themselves. The good thing is they are overnight so we aren’t really wasting much sightseeing time. The flip side of this is that we tire easily because the sleep we get on the train isn’t that refreshing and it is easy to overestimate what you are able to do in a day. We had planned to stay at the museum until three in the afternoon but one couple we were with thought that wasn’t enough time. ‘No problem,’ said Jim. ‘Stay as long as you want.’ But when we met again at three and Jim asked them if they wanted to stay longer they shook their heads and meekly got back on the bus, tired little bunnies.

 It took us an hour to get back and the traffic in the cities of china is to be experienced to be believed. It takes a special kind of person to drive in this madness and Tory told us she refused to as it was just too crazy for her. We arrived back at 5 and Tory had organised an optional activity no one wanted to take her up on – just about everybody wanted to collapse. But Tory, in what i believe is true Chinese style, couldn’t bear to see our time wasted by sleep and happily chatted on about the things she wanted to get us to do. It was all very sweet but we all just wanted to collapse – so, we all edged away from her as she chatted and finally said good night and that we’d see her in the morning and ran for the bedrooms.