Saturday, 29 July: Terra Cotta Warriers and Hot Springs Ruins

Well, today was a good day to be a tourist! We got started around 9:30 and headed in the general direction of east, near the town of Lin Tong. The Terra Cotta Warriors museum is about an hour or so from the hotel.

But first we stopped at the Huaqing Hot Springs Ruins. These ruins were discovered in 1982 and have since become a major tourist attraction.

Below is a picture of Andy (from WorkSoft, very generously playing host/tourguide today), and Cathy at a pretty fountain just inside the gate at the ruins.














This fellow had made REAL good friends with the pigeons there. They have landed on his shoulders and arms hoping for a treat. It was pretty amazing!














This is a pretty pond looking west, towards one of the buildings at the ruins.














The sign for the Hot Springs Ruins.














There was a large hill, maybe a small mountain, behind the ruins. Note the cable car lift going up the moutain. There is a temple at the top of the mountain, but we didn't stop there.














This is looking right at the main part of the ruins. These buildings are actually just recently-constructed covers over the ruins themselves. The statue at the center is one of the emperor's concubines. The interesting thing about this statue (this is hard to tell from this photo) is that the concubine is nude. Therefore, this statue is only 30 or fewer years old. This kind of thing would not have been permitted prior to that time. So, since the ruins were only discovered in 1982, I'm guessing it's much newer.














This is the royal concubine's hot tub. There is no water in it, but people have tossed a lot of coins into it for good luck. I even saw a few paper bills, two of which had been folded into paper airplanes. This is a main part of the ancient ruins. The building over it was erected in recent times to protect it.














This is the emperor's hot tub. It has a little water in it and a bunch of coins. Notice that his tub is much bigger than the concubine's! There were several other tubs in the ruins compound as well, serving other parts of the emperor's staff.














Here's a little well fed by the hot springs. These children had fishing line with magnets on the end and were dangling them in the water hoping to snag one of the coins! We didn't wait around to see what success they had...














This is actually the hot springs, two side-by-side fountains fed by the springs. The water is quite soft and is probably about 110 degrees Farenheit when it comes out of these pillars. There is some green rock just visible inside the petals of this pedestal. That's jade, from the mountains around here. (It had to be a low-grade variety or somebody might have carried it off...jade is not cheap, even here around Xi'an where it's been mined.)














This is a pomegranate tree at the ruins. This one is of the yellow fruite variety. I also saw one with the more prevalant red colored fruit.













There's a very interesting story involving the Huaqing Hot Springs ruins from China's more recent history, too. It seems that in 1936, there was a major event there known as The Xi'an Incident. Here's a link to a story about it that tells the story much better than I could: http://www.bookrags.com/history/worldhistory/xian-incident-ema-06/ This is a very interesting story and I recommend that you go there and read it.

After a quick lunch at a restaurant across the highway from the ruins, we drove on to Lin Tong and on through it just a little ways.

Next came the main attraction: The Terra Cotta Warriors museum. "Terra cotta" means "baked earth", and that's what these guys all are: ceramic pottery. Anyway, here's a short history of the Terra Cotta Army. The first Chinese emperor, QinShihuang (pronounced "chin-shee-hwong"), looking for power in the Afterlife, commissioned his servants to build him an army of ceramic (baked-earth) soldiers and arrange them in his tomb for his use after he died. He believed that in the afterlife, these ceramic soldiers would be his army and provide him with much power. His loyal servants proceded to build this army, toiling for 38 years until the emperor's sudden death, in his 50's. All this took place until around 210BC. The army was unfinished and would remain so, but there were about 8000 of these warriors made and placed in and around the tomb by then. A couple of years after his death, the peasants violently rebelled against the emperor's son (the new emperor) and the tomb was destroyed, with most of these Terra Cotta Warriors ruined and many others damaged, some heavily. The tomb was lost. And it remained that way until 1974, when a member of a group of 6 farmers was digging a well for water. They found what ended up being the burial grounds of the tomb, with the warrior's remnants inside. So next came a massive restoration effort that is today still in progress and will be for many years to come.

Another thing that emperor QinShihuang is known for is for unifying much of modern-day China and for starting the Great Wall of China, mostly at the northernmost limits of his empire, in order to keep the Mongolians out of his land.

The first thing we did upon entering the museum compound was attend a movie about the Terra Cotta Army. It is inside a 360-degree theater and is standing only, although there are several railings to stand against if you want to. This was about 20 minutes long and provided a nice history of the emperor, his Terra Cotta Army, the destruction of the tomb, and its modern history and excavation/restoration.

Below is the main excavation in Pit 1 out of 3. Note these warriors all lined up in rows between earthen walls. That's the way they were placed in emperor QinShihuang's time and that's how they're being restored. A note about the scale in this picture. The warriors are all slightly bigger than life, at (as our paid tour-guide, a local man, repeated several times) 1.76 to 1.9 meters tall. They are bigger than normal so that the emperor would be assured of having the tallest army in the Afterlife. Also, the enclosure you see is hundreds of feet long and across, and is bigger than any airplane hangar I've ever seen. Almost all of the warriors face East, since that's the direction in which the sun rises.














Another view of some of the warriors in the army, in Pit 1. When these figures were created, they all had different faces, in likeness of the real emperor's army when he was alive. Each warrior was created with a hollow head, a hollow body, and solid legs/feet. Then these pieces were assembled with some form of ancient earthen cement. The army was all brightly painted, but you cannot see any paint on any of these figures, nor on any other figures here. Our guide tells us that these have been in the earth so long that the paint deteriorates in just 6 minutes when exposed to the modern air!




















This is a view of the South wall of the Army's burial enclosure. Notice that some of the warriors are facing out. This is so they could watch out for invaders.














This view is of the East end of the Army, looking North.














This is looking back towards the Northeast in Pit 1. Notice the Terra Cotta horses. This was to be a very well-equipped army for the emperor's Afterlife!














Another view of the Army, looking generally North.














This the point at which the excavation has been halted. There will be no more excavation until a way can be found around the rapid deterioration. These areas all hold more of the Terra Cotta Army, in pieces like those already excavated.














This is an area where active restoration takes place. Had this not been a Saturday, we would have seen specialists working on these broken figures.














Another view of the restoration area. Notice all the pieces laying on the ground.














Rear view (looking East) of the restoration area. Notice the big pieces missing on some of these in-progress figures.














Here are some restored horses and a charioteer.














This is an area of newly-restored warriors.














A close-up of the newly-restored warriors.














This is Cathy, me (of course) and Andy, standing in front of the area in the previous two photos. This photo was taken by our local guide.













This is inside Pit 2. More of the Army.














Here is what some of the destruction in Pit 2 caused by the peasant rebellion against the emperor's son looked like.














This is a close-up of a kneeling warrior, inside a glass enclosure. This picture can't show it, but the warrior's hair was very detailed, and the bottom of his shoe was also detailed.




















This is an officer in the Army.




















This is a member of the cavalry with his horse, inside a glass enclosure.




















This is a high-ranking officer of the Army.




















This guy is a standing archer. His bow and arrow is missing, possibly removed and destroyed during the peasant rebellion.




















Here's a modern-day statue of emperor QinShihuang himself, standing at the entrance to the museum.





















Other things we saw but didn't photograph at the museum included the Bronze Chariot (too dark and no flashes allowed), also buried with the Army. There was on display that one and another chariot, both beautifully restored and displayed in environment-controlled enclosures. There were also various weapons and other implements on display.

I picked up a book about the site and history of it that has tons of great pictures and information about the Terra Cotta Army. I'm sure you'll find it quite interesting, and it has many more (all MUCH better) pictures of the whole site, including many items I didn't photograph like the Bronze Charriot.

One point about the emperor that Cathy, Andy and I discussed at great length was that emperors including this one were in the habit of, after they died, having all their concubines, servants and what amounts to engineers entombed with them -- alive. This was to provide these emperors with technology and servants (and women) in the Afterlife and to keep the technology out of the hands of other empires. Sort of makes you wonder what the concubines, servants, and engineers all thought of this...

One unfortunate after-effect of all this burying alive stuff is that ancient technology was continually being lost to the ages. Some of these technologies have only recently been reproduced, like how to keep bronze from tarnishing, and some have yet to be re-discovered, like how to work with bronze, silver, and gold at the same time (some of the artifacts had all three) when they all three melt at different temperatures.

So that was the Terra Cotta Army! It certainly exceeded my expectations by far and it's easy to see why it's Xi'an's number one tourist destination. The admittance was about 90RMB, and the guide was about another 100RMB. The taxi from the hotel to the museum and back was negotiated to 200RMB, not bad at all considering the ride to the Software Park is about 12-14RMB. The taxi also had to fill up on the return trip, and watching a car take on Natual Gas (all the taxis run on NG) was a little strange.

So, after a bit of cleaning up and relaxing at the hotel, we went out for dinner at another of those restaurants with private dining rooms. After a nice dinner and some work talk, it was time for the hotel and this update, then maybe -- just maybe -- bed before 1:00am for a change. Maybe.