China: Monday

After arriving in Xi'an and showering at the hotel we were ready to see the Terra-cotta Warriors! They were discovered about 40 years ago when some men were digging a well. A piece of a warrior came up with some dirt and the well was forgotten. Since then 3 'pits' have been discovered. Each pit has a different set up. I'd love to explain more but we didn't have a tour guide and most explanations were either in Chinese or it was too crowded to stand and read. A roof and walls have been built around each pit to preserve them and so tourists can come while they're still being excavated. It was interesting.

This is Pit 1 and the most famous one. You can see all the warriors lined up in rows. You can also see some of the building. This one looked like the Superdome.

Since we went on a Monday there were excavators there. You can see the planks they walk on and lights they use. It looks like tedious work to piece the soldiers back together. In the back of the building there were quite a few statues lined up that were still missing pieces. I can't believe how well preserved they were in general though.

Here we are standing with some of the warriors. (We're such tourists!)

Xi'an was hosting the world horticulture expo and this was the mascot. (You should have seen all the Chinese people watching Scott take this silly picture. He loved it!) Scott really wanted to go but we couldn't figure out how to get there, and no one understood what we wanted, until we took the wrong bus to the train station on our way back to Beijing. The bus dropped us off nearby but we had to hustle to the train. Bummer deal.

We already forgot what this place was but it was a tomb where it is hypothesized that some guy built an entire city to be buried in. The Chinese seem very worried about life after death. They're not quite sure what to do with is so they build huge tombs and have everyone buried with them. Luckily sometimes their concubines are allowed a forced suicide instead of being buried alive...

That night we went to a water show in front of the Big Goose Pagoda. It was pretty cool. They had the water and lights set to music and it lasted about 30 minutes. You could stand in the middle of the walkways and not get wet. Scott was in heaven.

By the end of the night we were so tired and beat. I'm not sure that we ever ate breakfast or lunch and dinner was hard to comeby. We went into a few resturants for dinner but they all smelled disgusting so that wasn't fun. Scott got a sandwich from a street vendor that was supposed to be beef but he thought it was liver. I'd never seen him throw away food until that night. After the water show we stopped by a fast food looking place but the meat was so spicy I gave up. We also tried the vanilla ice cream but whatever flavor it was wasn't vanilla!