30/08/18 I took a bus to the hostel. I am sharing the room with 3 other girls, and the hostel is beautiful, Chinese decorated with a rooftop with a view on the city wall, which I decided to explore straight away. The receptionist said I could rent a bike on top of the wall, which I did as the wall is 13km long. But by this heat (37 degrees) it was exhausting.
I stopped by a local restaurant to have chicken and rice for dinner. I am actually located in a really cool part of the city, where there are many bars, clubs and restaurants. The city is all light up with neons and illuminated deco, it is beautiful at night. During the day, you can see the city makes a great effort to make it look good too, with flower sculptures, parks and many trees. This is my favorite Chinese city so far.
31/08/18 Lili the tour guide picked me up at 7.30 for a terracotta warriors day tour. I forgot the tout also includes the city wall, but as I did it by bike yesterday, today I can rest and take the electric car. The group was small as only 2 guys (father and son) from Guiam and a British couple joined the tour.
First stop was the terracotta warriors, soldiers made of clay more than 2000 years ago by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, to protect him in the afterlife. 7500 warriors were made, in addition to horses, chariots and weapons, buried in 3 separate chambers. Archeologists are still working on site, trying to rebuild the warriors as they were destroyed by invaders and earthquakes before being discovered by 3 farmers in the 1970’s.
It took about 10 years for the artists to create the warriors, using molds and a special baking process of 3 days at low temperature and 4 days at 900 degrees. The warriors are all different, wearing different armours, colours and having different faces. They used the real soldiers army to create the molds. Some warriors were created headless to keep their identity secret, like many generals or high rank warriors. The first pit was the most impressive, as it was fully open, and many warriors are standing in a good shape thanks to the hard work of archeologists. The rest remains covered or broken into pieces. the warriors were also full of colours, but due to oxydation when they were first discovered, the colour faded away in a few hours. Luckily some pictures were taken and the museum exposes a few. They also made a lot of replicas for the tourists.
The warriors were made to human size, but a bit stronger and taller than the average Chinese human being, as they are 174-190cm tall. They are made of clay found in the nearby mountain and are located close to the emperor’s tomb. They were all finished before the emperor’s death.
The emperor’s tomb is the only site that hasn’t been robbed or destroyed, as the access was too difficult and dangerous for the invaders. The tomb is 50m deep, full of death traps and mercury to poison anyone who would feel adventurous enough.
Not far from the exit, many little shops sell souvenirs and local food items, where I tried a delicious snack, crispy twisted rice sticks, sweet and slightly spicy (which you can buy by the scale (on the weight?) in a few places in the city). I also found small living scorpions and other bugs but I didn’t try these ?.
Our second stop was a local restaurant to have lunch, where we shared sweet and sour chicken, eggplants, shrimps and Xi’an burgers, little buns filled with pork.
Next we went to the city wall where we explored about 25% of the 14km long wall built 1300 years ago to protect the city in the Tang dynasty. Some of us took the electric car, quite nice with this heat (37 degrees) as there is no shade up there, and the British couple took the bike.
Our final stop was the Muslim street where you can buy market food and local souvenirs.
I went out for dinner and ordered eggplants, beans and what I thought was fried rice but it turned out it was noodles. I also bought red bean paste buns for breakfast tomorrow at a local supermarket.
