12 hours and a whole lotta terracotta

Right, where were we? Ah yes, we had boarded the train from Beijing to Xi’an and David had successfully acquired us 2 “hard sleeper” beds for the 12 hour, overnight journey. Sadly we have no photos of the carriage but it wasn’t really anything special – each side had 3 bunk beds running up the wall, and once we were settled in we soon drifted off to sleep. Granted, it wasn’t a great night’s sleep for me but I got about 6 hours and before we knew it, it was 9am and we were arriving at our destination.

We dragged our bags off the train and dumped them in the baggage storage of the train station, before hunting down some breakfast. Choices were limited and we eventually decided to do it Chinese-style and get a bowl of beef and noodles from a chain restaurant called “Mr Lee’s”.

It's the Chinese Colonel!
And his noodles were chopstick lickin' good!

We then set about trying to find out how to get to the Terracotta Army. Luckily we bumped into a friendly Argentinean woman who was also heading that way, so we tagged along and boarded a bus to the site. Upon arrival, our new friend asked if we would be interested in joining her to get a tour guide. We explained that we didn’t have the money for it, but she kindly said she’d pay and we could tag along if we wanted. The guide wasn’t up to much, making all manner of claims about Chinese history, such as the fact that they were using chrome on their arrow tips as early as 2000 years ago. Yeh, sure. And I’m sure those plastic chopsticks you found at the bottom of your garden date back to the Ming Dynasty!

Anyway, David had read that the best way to see the 3 “pits” at the site was to do them backwards, therefore ending with the biggest and most impressive. This is a definite must for anyone visiting the Terracotta Army.

I won’t go in to too much detail, as there was quite a lot of repetition in the different buildings, but we made our way through a couple of museums, showing ancient Chinese relics, along side some statues from the pits, all of which was very well preserved and did add a little doubt in our minds as to the accuracy of the dates being displayed. However, we were very impressed by the detail on the soldiers and archers, and got some good close-up pictures to show you.

A pot dated between 9000-6000 BC - That is old!!

We saw a terracotta horse and carriage, archer, stable boy, gardener swan, helmet and armour, and discovered that along with all the statues, real animals were buried in the tombs, so that the Emperor’s family would have a beautiful garden to play in once they died. It was all quite strange.

Horses and carriage

Kneeling archer

Copper duck

Pot-belly soldier!

Gardener

Armour - here made of terracotta but would
really have been made of bamboo.
Chinese bamboo, very strong!

Helmet

There is little doubt that the terracotta army is an incredible human achievement. The statues were discovered in the 1970s and currently around 9000 have been excavated but there are hundred more to be found and restored. The emperor made thousands of slaves carve out the warriors (no two are identical… apparently – in my eyes, a lot looked the same!). The stone statues were buried underground so they escaped the eroding forces of nature. After the slaves completed their work, they were murdered and buried, along with hundreds of animals, in the tomb they had made to hide the knowledge of its creation. I wonder if the emperor then murdered the murderers to hide the murder of thousands of people. Would he continue to murder everyone until there was no-one left?? The emperor strikes me as an evil task driver, much like one of my co-workers. Regardless, the incredible site is arguably the most interesting archaeological discovery of all time.

After the museums we moved on to the “pits”. These are the underground rooms that have been excavated and where the army was discovered. We started with the smallest, as planned, and this was mostly filled with broken statues of soldiers and horses. The size of the pit was impressive, but the content wasn’t that great…until I started to notice the faces. It was really eerie, seeing all of these broken faces staring up at me from the bottom of the pit, all mixed in with arms and feet…

How many faces can you spot? 

Then it was on to the next pit – this one actually had some whole statues in and we started to get a sense of that it was all about. There were quite a few headless ones, but regardless they looked really real, standing down there with their horses. 

This was nothing compared with the final pit though. If we had done pit 1 first, the rest of the buildings and pits would have been a let-down, but saving the best until last meant we had slowly worked ourselves up for this spectacular sight. The pit was huge – 230x62 metres according to wiki and it houses over 6,000 soldiers and horses. It was very intimidating and we couldn’t help but think about what would happen if they all suddenly came to life. I wouldn’t mind watching a low-budget horrow film about that actually.

Fortunately, the day we went was quiet (by Chinese standards) so we didn’t have to wait for long to get a view and some pictures from the balcony but sadly, we simply couldn’t capture the overwhelming size of it all.

What I think you will notice, from the photos, is that the terracotta that they are made from is not the burnt orange colour that we usually associate with the material…they were more of a grey colour. What you also may not know is that they were originally painted to look much more realistic, but apparently upon opening the tombs, the oxygen reacted with the paint and made it disappear. Or so they say.

The warriors are over 2000 years old. 2000 years old. 2000 years old. WOW. The detail that is still present is unbelievable. I mean, seriously, it’s unbelievable –I don’t believe it!

My theory is that in the 1800s, the Chinese (ahead of the rest of us of course) realised that tourism was going to be a big money maker. So they made this site to bring in the bucks. The reason I have drawn this conclusion is that it is just an incredible site. I doubt the museums in Egypt will be as impressive as this… But if you hang around for long enough, we might make it there and write a comparison :).

Here is a short video in pit 3 where I attempt (badly) to show the scale of the pit. You can watch it in HD if you click on 360p and select a higher resolution.

Needless to say, it was an amazing experience and definitely worth the 12 hour train ride to get there. But would it still be worth it after the 16 hour journey back to Shanghai? Having been in Xi’an for a mere 12 hours, we boarded another train but this time, disaster struck! We were unable to upgrade our seats to sleepers! What’s more, our seats weren’t next to each other! Fortunately a very kind man swapped with me so that I could sit next to David – but this was little comfort once we stopped to soak in our surroundings…while the first train had been relatively new and clean, akin to an Arriva Trains Wales experience, this one was…much more Chinese. The carpet that lined the aisle had a distinct wet dog aroma, which mingled horribly with the cigarette smoke that constantly lingered in the air. As I stared down at the offending rug, I noticed that it was decorated with a sprinkling of crumbs, and studded with discarded chicken bones. But I wouldn’t have to stare at this disgusting floor for long, because it soon became covered in people – standing, squatting, sitting and, as the night drew on, lying in the aisle, for the entire 16 hours. Words cannot express how uncomfortable it was trying to sleep – so we didn’t. Towards the end of the journey a family boarded and squashed in opposite us…with a tiny tank containing 2 turtles. I did think I was hallucinating this, but we have photographic evidence that it did actually happen.

The view from our seat...for 16 hours - rammo!

Evidence

So, after arriving in Shanghai an hour later than scheduled, we dragged ourselves back to the hostel that we had stayed in at the very start of our trip. This time our room was on the next floor up, which was still being renovated, but we didn’t care – we dumped our bags, peeled off our disgusting, train-smelling clothes, had much needed showers, and then headed out for some food. It wasn’t long until we were back at the hostel, exhausted, snuggled up on the bottom of our double bunk-bed, watching a very intense BBC drama, and trying to forget about the horrors of the night before.

Then a mouse ran up the bedpost.

Beijing Part 2

So back in Beijing, after the wall – we were starving. After seeing the donkey on the wall, it flipped a switch in my mind, so we decided to try some donkey dumplings. They were delicious!
“Where else did you go?” I hear you cry. Well we went to the Summer Palace. This is basically a gigantic park with temples, pagodas, a huge lake and bridges. It was so huge that it wasn't actually rammo, which was nice. Oh yeah, it was also stunningly beautiful and my favourite place in Beijing. We spent about 6 hours in the park and here is a selection of our favourite photos.

This is us dressed in the "traditional" clothing
of the Emperor and Empress

Suzhou street was the highlight of the Summer Palace
- an old, traditional feeling street running along both sides of a canal

We then had a look at the Beijing Olympics’ site. The bird’s nest stadium was a sight to behold and it seemed to still be drawing in the crowds 3 years after the Olympics. I wonder if East London will have the same appeal? When I think of East London I imagine a Kosovo-like, decimated city but will the Olympics force East London to rise like a phoenix out of the ashes and join the rest of London (ignoring the South) in the 21^st century? It's unlikely but I'm sure Boris has it under control.

We saw two more parks in Beijing: Jinshan and Beihai park. Who would have thought we'd see more Parks in China than in Korea?! In Jinshan park Dave got an awesome panoramic photo of the Forbidden City - click the picture to full screen it and be overwhelmed by the size of the temple complex.

We also stumbled upon a butterfly enclosure.

Beihai park had a dragon screen, a lake, a pagoda and a wall of Buddhas. It also had a beautiful temple surrounded by ponds - apparently it's very unique.

Dragon Screen

We also went to Beijing zoo and, of course, saw some pandas. They were cute and seemed happy but the rest of the zoo was as disgusting as some of Dave's similes. We saw a man (a fully grown man!) throw a coke bottle at a tiger and numerous people poke crackers through the railings to feed various animals - because everyone knows the important role the great Ryvita tree plays in the African grasslands. The worst, though, was the bear enclosure. It was filthy.

Dirty Dirty Bear Enclosure

The experience only supported our impression that Chinese people seemingly have little respect for cleanliness and politeness. Maybe it is due to the sheer concentration of people, meaning that you’ll generally have more shit-covered apples than you would in any other country. But our views of Chinese people were conforming to the stereotypes: loud, dirty and rude.


Of course, we had travelled there from Korea, which is very clean and full of generous, friendly, respectful Confucianists, so our view would probably have been different if we had travelled from the scummy, needle-filled, Chav-breeding gutters of our beloved Manchester! 

Cute Small Pandas

Bigger Less Cute Medium Panda

Old Nearly Dead Panda

Let’s move on from insulting over a fifth of the world’s population to the next destination - Tiananmen Square. I only know of Tiananmen Square because of the student riots that led to that infamous picture of a young man standing in front of a tank with his arm up. But it was an interesting experience. The largest public square in the world had no shade and in the scorching heat it was a little uncomfortable so we didn’t stay long.
Again I have to wonder if China, in all its wisdom, couldn't have taken the time to install the world's largest gazebo over the square?
There were a lot of CCTV cameras and many military men. Some interesting statues and the surrounding buildings were very communist looking.

CCTV & an Interesting Lamppost

I feel like Tiananmen Square would be an interesting place to hold a flash mob freeze (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo). I wonder how the Chinese police would react – would they start cracking skulls or just ignore it? If they started murdering people like the student riots then at least it might not be as busy in Beijing.

So, we reach the end of Beijing, where the bulk of our holiday was spent. Would I go back? I certainly don’t feel the need to. It’s similar to watching Memento. I loved it but watching it for a second time seems pretty much pointless.
I, on the other hand, would like to go back, but do things in a different order - much like my feelings on watching Memento again.

We boarded a train for Xi’an and sat down in our hard seat where we would be treated to a 12 hour ride. My cunning, perseverance and wallet full of cash managed to get us an upgrade to a sleeper carriage, which was definitely good news. However I had to carry both our huge rucksacks through 13 carriages, which were littered with people asleep / squatting in the aisles. I arrived a hot sweaty mess but would at least be spending the night in the comfort of a narrow sleeper train bed.
As I drifted off, I couldn't help but think of "Namesake", and the train crash, and "The Overcoat"...I realised that the book in my bag was "The Help", and since I can't possibly name my first child Kathryn (and Stockett would just be silly!), I figured there was no way we were going to crash. And so I drifted off to sleep...

All in all it's just another, blog on the wall

I currently have blog diarrhoea – they are coming out fast and they aren't as solid as I would hope for. However the China adventures must continue as we depart for Japan this weekend and this blog is becoming as outdated as my jokes (and sitcoms).

After the rammo sights of the subway and the Forbidden City in Beijing, our expectations of a quiet tourist attraction were low for the Great Wall. We flirted with the idea of going our own way or even paying to sit in a bus for longer to go somewhere further away from Beijing and hopefully less busy. But finding an isolated spot in China is like trying to find a decent beer in Asia – it’s just not gonna happen.

We went to the Mutianyu section and we were both very happy with the choice. It was isolated enough to get some non-crowded photos and we got some awesome views as it was a clear sunny day.

It was an amazing feeling, standing on The Wall above the treetops, feeling like I was on top of the world...and yet couldn't help but wish that The Great Wall of China had been fitted with The Great Awning of China. By the time we were actually on the wall and climbing the hundreds of steps up and down, and up and down, and up and down, we were stuck under the midday sun with nothing but a handful of watchtowers to provide some shade. It was hot. Really hot. And for the first time in my life I was actually worried I might burn! Not only were we dripping with sweat, but we were being constantly accosted by all manner of prehistoric-sized insects and at one point, even a donkey! Needless to say, as wonderful and breathtaking as the experience was, it wasn't exactly a glamorous occasion.

Our coach dropped us at the bottom of a hill and we got a cable car to the top of the Wall, which provided us with some good shots. Let’s just shut up and look at some photos.

We saw some old wall as well that hadn’t been restored – it was … similar but older. Like Martin and Charlie Sheen.

The best part of the day was getting a toboggan down from the wall. It was great fun and it felt like a truly authentic Wall experience.

There are loads more photos in the very cleverly named facebook album "All in all it's just another pic of The Wall" - yes Dave I am taking credit for the name of this blog too because let's face it, I'm the witty one here.