March 28, 2012 Terracotta Warriors

On our way to the hotel in Xi'an we noticed how drab and dark the streets and buildings are. This is a very old city whose only tourist attraction are the terracotta warriors...please don't get me wrong..I was overwhelmed by the scale and magnitude of 'Pit 1' or the largest excavation so far. One of the only 3 remaining farmers who dug a well and discovered shards of these figures and the tomb of the Chin Emperor signed the book I purchased about the works. This two football fields wide by 4 football fields long. There is still alot of work to do and it will take decades to unearth all the figures. The city itself is low tech and ancient, very different from what we've seen in both Beijing and southern China. It took 37 years to finish the tomb...long after the Emperor had died. Some parts of the tomb have not been excavated because they know the Emperor filled the tombs with Mercury to keep out thieves. They haven't yet figured out how to open the tomb safely. Initially the figures were brightly coloured but faded very quickly after exposure to the air. we saw pictures of the initial finds. Went to a famous dumpling restaurant and watched a Tang Dynasty Show (dance and musical performances) after dinner in the same restaurant. packed for airport trip for tomorrow.