XI'AN, CHINA

Xi'an and it's surrounding area is at the very heart of China's history. This city served as the capital seat for twelve dynasties for more than 1100 years and it's Wei valley is the birthplace of Chinese civilization. It was here that the mythical Yellow Emperor, in the 3rd millennium BC, conquered the other warring tribes to give birth to the Chinese nation. The Western Han dynasty, 206BC-8AD, moved the capital to within 10 miles of what is now Xi'an. During this prosperous time, the city rose to international prominence. A century after the opening of the Silk Road, Julius Caesar appeared one evening at the theatre wearing a garmet that caused quite a stir. It was a silk robe from Xi'an. Silk, paper, tea, iron casting and irrigation were other inventions similarly exported to the West at this time. Today, Xi'an is a farming area with a few steel mills and coal burning power plants. The steel and coal put a lot of pollution into the air. While we were there, we never saw blue sky. They do not have very many days that they do get to see the sky. It made it seem very depressing. The life of the farmers is a tough one. They harvest their crops of wheat two times a year, so they have to find trade work to make ends meet. Many of the younger farmers are leaving Xi'an areas in order to have a better life in the city. The biggest attraction for this city is of course the Terracotta Warriors. Look at the pictures of the city, the plants and the very dismal looking housing. This is a piece of China we had not yet seen. Upon arriving at our hotel, our hostess, Nadia told us to relax for a bit and then meet her in a private dining room for dinner and dumpling and noodle making! What a fun night. As you can see from the pictures, we all gave it a go, except Charles. He did try to tell us all how to do it using his math skills, but we still were not able to get the hang of it!

Here, the noodle master tries to give us a lesson in noodle making. It is all in the wrists, I think!

You get your hands soaked in oil and then you take a long pice of dough, roll it out and then while you are pulling it apart you swing it up and down in front of your chest area. Once you have this done you flip it around with your wrists like trying to make a pretzel. You do this about a thousand times and somehow you end up with noodles! Look at our attempts! The dumpling making was more my speed.

Kathleen and Nicholas posed like warriors by a "fake" that was in our hotel. They could not wait to see the real ones the next day!

And here they are!!! Look at them....thousands of them. In 1974 a farmer was digging a well for water. He was going deep, about 15 feet when he hit something, this something turned out to be a head of one of the warriors! Looking at the pit behind the kids, the area to the far right is the "edge" of the whole army. Had this farmer been digging a few inches more to the right, he would not have found them. He reported his findings to the government and they came to take a look. They unearthed many more soldiers and came to realize what they found was a small portion of the eight thousand strong underground army buried in front of the Emperor Qinshihuang's tomb, 221-207BC, to defend him in his afterlife. Over 700,000 forced laborers were sacrificed to construct his tomb, which began when he took the throne. The ceiling of the tomb was inlaid with pearls to represent the starry heaven. The floor made of stone, forms a map of the Chinese kingdom, a hundred rivers of mercury flow across the top of it. AND all of this was protected by deadly booby traps! The tomb today is not nearly finished being excavated. I was surprised by this. I was expecting to see all 8,000 warriors looking at me. How dumb was I? They were only found in 1974. They started working on them in 1975. They soon realized that the warriors were in bad shape. Not many were in full pieces. They had to be put back together! It would be like a 100 billion piece jigsaw puzzle! It is amazing what they have done. Some of the warriors have been brought up out of the pits and are in glass cases. You cannot see a seam anywhere on them. Amazing. What the Chinese also found out is that the warriors had bright colors when they were buried all those years ago and when they dug them up, they oxidized and they lost their color. This is one reason they have slowed down the unearthing. They are hoping to find a way to preserve their color, so many ae still buried. There are 3 pits for public view. All are in buildings that resemble buildings you'd see on the campus of a junior college built in the 1970's. However, one pit was recently discovered one mile away from these warriors. Pit 5. There is nothing in Pit 4, don't know why. Anyway, we had the priveledge of going to pit 5. Only Bill Clinton and Queen Elizabeth have been into Pit 1, but we were about to get to walk down into pit 5!

Warriors as far as you can see.
There are 5 body types, but all the heads are different!!!
They take the pieces out of the pit to reconstruct them and then put them back into the pit. These warriors and horses were wroks in progress.



All around the pit 1-4 area were soldiers every 6 feet or so. Take a look at Pit 5. It is in this old blue metal building! They said it was to keep people from really knowing it was there. All that guarded it was one man in street clothes and a really mean dog!

These warriors are from pit5.
The Chinese really like Bill Clinton. When he came there he had his picture made with the farmer that found the warrior head and it is hanging above where the farmer sits to sign books about the warriors. The farmer was paid a few dollars for his finding and given a life off the farm. All he does now is autograph these books. He is totally illiterate. All he can do is sign his name. Very sad and very sad that he does not reap any of the benefit of the ticket sales of the tourists!! They don't allow you to take the farmer's picture, but this is where he sits, right under Bill Clinton!
A family photo with the warriors. In pit 5 they have found bronze armor for the warriors. When we walked down there, it was like looking at tiny pieces of a puzzle that will take YEARS to put together. They have not yet found the Emperor's remains. They think they know where he is but they say they don't have the money or the expertise to unearth him. They don't know what kind of booby traps they will find there either!!! I told our guide if they taxed every Chinese person one dollar they would have 1.3 Billion dollars to go toward this effort and get it doe before the olympics! He thought I was nuts!

Lunch after the warriors. Kathleen is desperate for Charles not to ask the server to bring him a FORK!! She wanted him to use the chopsticks!!

An Asian toilet. These are all the rage here. You get a squats workout when you use the restroom. No wonder there are no obese Chinese people!

Had to see a Buddist temple in Xi'an. This one is called the Big Goose Pagoda. We never got a good answer to why it has this name. I'll try to ask around. Fifty monks live at this temple. This monk in the picture was old and just about the same size as Nicky! He was really cute, so we took his picture.
A muslim area of Xi'an is where the shoping market is. Kathleen and Nicholas have learned the art of bargaining. I hope they don't get home and go to the grocery store with me and try to get the price down on the bananas!!!

You can see the top of the pagoda from this distance. The kids bought paper kites and tried to fly them. All was going well until Nicholas' kite got tangled up with a Chinese lady's kite. That kid of ended the kite flying. It was fun while it lasted and the kites cost about 50 cents for 3 of them.

Here is the tangle. Everyone in the square came over to try to help. All I wanted to do was tell the lady we would give her our extra kite and we would head to the airport! We were ready to see Hong Kong. We had a great trip to Xi'an, loaded with history, but you can see in every picture, no sky. Very sad for the people that live there. I was ready for warmth and blue sky. On to Hong Kong....