Today another wonder of the World. How many can one take in one trip?
Samuel is a modern young man with ambitions to be a cultural ambassador for China. He has just returned from his first guiding tour abroad where he took a group of English speaking tourists to various parts of Asia. He has qualified to work internationally and is quite rightly proud of himself.
He uses an I pad to show us pictures and diagrams about where we are going and of course where we are going today is to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.
First we walked on the City Walls of Xian which are beautifully restored and maintained. You could cycle or walk the 14km all round but we just did one side, the east side as we were leaving the City by the East Gate to go to see the Warriors.
The Walls give more opportunity for the exercise that older Chinese people like to do so much outdoors,, More reflexology and more Tai Chai
Then off for about half an hour to see the Warriors
Samuel told us the tale of the farmer who found them when he was digging a well
He said that the farmer had three horse drawn carts full of bit of the warriors and he took them to the city officials. They told him he was a hero of China and gave him 3 Yuan for them. He said he could bring them more and could borrow more horses and carts to make more money but they said no. This belongs to the Government now!!
Samuel talked of an American couple who came and met the farmer at the museum and asked him to sign his name. He could not write but drew three circles representing the three coins he was given for the three carts full.
The American was surprised that he could not write and suggested to the City officials that they should teach the man to write his name and then he could sign the books that were for sale about the Warriors and earn some commission. The Chinese Officials might have ignored this suggested but for the fact that the American couple were Bill and Hilary Clinton!
So now the farmer is a rich man but he was there this morning signing books! We did not buy one as we were seriously close to paying excess baggage on one of our cases yesterday! The other one is ok so we can repack but there are still some things we would like to buy so must be careful. We did buy postcards though.
Let me tell you about the warriors
They are in three pits and one is the one you will have seen on the news or in magazines. The awful story we heard was that when they were uncovered they were fully coloured in wonderful bright paint but within 40 minutes to 2 days after they were exposed to the light the colour flaked off and that is why the ones we see are just brown!!
In the second and third pit there are less warriors as most have not been exposed yet. They are still buried under the wooden roofs and straw matting that they were covered with originally. They will be excavated once they can be protected and there is a German method they are using at present to test out how to do this.
The Emperor, whose tomb it is, is buried just under 2km away from these pits and they have not even used robotic cameras to look in there yet.
Most of what I can tell you will not be news as we do know a great deal of what they look like and of their story. However being there causes another silent Lizzy moment. Tone is trying to decide whether spending all this money to keep me quiet is a good deal!
My favourite thing about the warriors is their faces which are all different. Again I know you will be aware of this but seeing them makes them seem like models of real soldiers and it is quite moving.
They have lovely faces
We saw an American sponsored Imax film of the discovery which was not as amazing as the real things but interesting all the same and then reluctantly left to walk back to the car and our driver to return to Xian
What a treat. I have lost count of the number of times I have said to Tone, how lucky we are. Just think where we are n the world.
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