Terracotta Warriors. Yes, you have heard of them before, or
at least seen a picture of them somewhere sometime. You may not have paid much
attention to it at the time, but somewhere in the back of your mind, these are
somewhat familiar. Being in almost the middle of China, which happens to be a
HUGE country by the way (and would have to be, what with one and a half billion
people living here), visiting the Terracotta Warriors would need to be a
massive voyage for most. Well, not us, since we are living in Luoyang, which
happens to be just five hours away by train (90 minutes by the more expensive
fast train). So, on the slow train we headed for our first weekend away from
Luoyang!
This whole trip to the Shaanxi province was thrown together
last minute, so the first thing we did upon our arrival was go in search of a
place to lay our heads for the evening. Armed with nothing but a copy of the
Lonely Planet and a Mandarin Phrase Book, we ventured out into the rain. Quite
soon after we found the Han Tang Inn and got situated in our bunk beds.
Off to the “Muslim Quarter” we went in search of food and a
good time, and boy did we find it. There was such a good atmosphere there,
tons of people walking the street, lights on all of the buildings, it was like
being in Vegas, well, not quite. More like a Muslim Chinatown, if you can
picture that. The damp air was filled with barbeque smells, and we knew this
was a good place to fill our bellies. We were not wrong. After some fried rice
and some lamb and beef kebabs (we think), we were satisfied.
The next morning we headed out of the Han Tang Inn in search
of the Terracotta Warriors. They were about an hour away, and we kind of just
got on a bus and hoped that it would take us there, and it did! We couldn’t
believe it would cost $50 for the two of us to get in, but at the end of the
day it was a small price to pay for a real life view of the “Eighth wonder of
the world.”
The Terracotta Warriors were made to protect the tomb of
some emperor or something like that. Again, our history is not too great, but
we’ve been there done that now so haha. We went the opposite way from most tour
groups and ended with the biggest “pit,” with about 6,000 warriors in it. It is
a toss up between that big pit and getting our pictures taken for “Coolest
thing we did in Xi’an.”
But really, we had such a great time seeing the Warriors. It
was quite amazing that all of those thousands of Warriors are unique. There
were horses too, and they are all organized in a formation so that they are a
legit army. I guess it is the kind of place that you have to go to appreciate,
and we are really glad that we did.
Lain also tried communicating with a Chinese Muslim lady
called Salima for an hour or two on the train home. All we had was our phrase
book, which isn’t too much help when you can’t pronounce anything, but it was
fun nonetheless. Salima was a really nice lady, and gave us a prune each. She
even played us some music, which was nice.