China Peony Festival Tour 2015
April 10th - 23rd, 2015
 

 

April 14

After breakfast we set off to visit one of the most amazing sights, that of the Terra Cotta Warriors. Our local guide was full of information as we toured through all the pits and I was happy to hear that this was on the bucket list of a few and they were thrilled to finally see it in person. Much different than seeing pictures of it. After we toured through, we had a short time to view a video and spend some dollars in the gift shop. The farmer who discovered the warriors was here so a few bought books to have them signed by him. What a discovery he made! 6000 lifesize warriors and horses have been discovered so far, many are still covered. It took around 38 years to make and they think around 720,000 people worked on the whole site.

I have seen this a number of times now and was delighted to see that they have opened up a new exhibit where you can get close up to see the detail of these warriors…what a thrill. To see the strands of hair and soles of the shoes with their markings…incredible. They also discovered dancers that were placed inside – for the warriors or Emperor’s amusement? They also have a couple fully painted as they would have been on display so you can see just how colourful they were – 7 different paint colours were found. They are too afraid to open any more pits now as they have found that the paint used just disintegrates when it comes into contact with air. I expect there will be much more to see when they have this figured out. The same thing with his tomb. They do not want to open it as they have done some tests to discover there are high levels of mercury that could prove fatal and most important, they do not want to open the tomb because of superstition. This will have to wait as well until they figure out some way to get around it….but I just cannot imagine what it will be like to open up the tomb of Emperor Qin if what we see today are just some of his warriors…

For our lunch today, it was at the site and here we enjoyed shaved noodles for the first time…lunch was fun and very good. Then we enjoyed an afternoon at leisure to catch up on notes or walk or nap. In the evening we enjoyed a Dumpling dinner and the Tang Dynasty Show.

 

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