Terra Cotta Warriors

Would you be sad if I said they were an anticlimax? As crushed as I am to say it, I was underwhelmed. Before you get totally disappointed, there were a few non-ancient factors that contributed to that. The first is that they don't heat the buildings that cover the site, so it was freakin' freezing in there. The second is that the buildings basically look like giant high school hockey rinks inside, complete with spotty lighting, so half the stuff was really hard to get a good look at for lack of light. The third was the cold. So was the fourth. The fifth was that my glasses were in the bottom of my backpack, and I didn't want to loudly rummage through my bag and wake everyone else in the dorm (at 9:30 AM...lazy bums!), so even if the lighting had been good, I wouldn't have been able to see especially well.
But the fact remains that they're pretty impressive. The largest of the three groups is about as long as 2 football fields end to end, and although they're not completely excavated, what has been unearthed is pretty amazing. Each soldier is different. Their heights, builds, and facial features are all unique, and I got some cool photos of some different guys. Not only that, but they seem to have different personalities. The self-satisfied general, the intently concentrating kung fu artist, the slightly daydreamy infantryman...it was really interesting to see them all. It really is as if the emperor had his whole army replicated in clay and buried with him.
One of the coolest things, which I didn't know, is that his tomb remains undisturbed to this day. One of the biggest reasons for this 2000 year resting in peace is the fact that the whole tomb is surrounded by a layer of mercury, so if anybody disturbs the outer layer of the tomb they're in for a nasty bit of poisoning. The idea of an undisturbed royal burial anywhere is tantalizing to the Indiana Jones in me.
And speaking of Indiana Jones, my compadre for the day was a German archaeology student, so he was good for information on preservation techniques and stuff like that. His name, significantly enough for my mother's side of the family, is Dirck.
After the warriors we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which had plenty of cool stuff to see, but frankly I don't remember anything but the big tall tower and the Vegas-style musical fountain show. And a few very vivid wall artworks depicting the travels of a Buddhist saint through some of the very places I've already visited (namely India and the Middle East). But honestly, even that is not the clearest in my memory because I was too cold to think about anything but how cold I was. Note to self: going from steamy Bangkok to freezing Xi'an is a major shock to the system.
The last fun thing for today was the dumpling party at the hostel. Basically a few of us sat around the table stuffing dumplings together. Despite my best efforts, mine always came out totally misshapen. But when you steam them up, they taste the same, right? We tested that theory after the chef steamed them up, and they were, in fact, quite delicious. I approve. Fun times.
Tomorrow I'll see a few more local sites like the museum, and then it'll be off to a little town called Pingyao, which I've been told by pretty much everybody is adorably historic. A lot of the old town is still intact, so I can go and see what an old Chinese town would have looked like before modern skyscrapers popped up in the middle of them. I'm looking forward to it. And a couple girls who went on the tour today are going there, too, so I may even have someone to pal around with - and they're Chinese, so my language barrier issues may be temporarily resolved! And they're also headed to Beijing after a day in Pingyao, just like me, so I may see them there, too. Life is good.
Off to get something hot to drink to thaw out....