Hostel
We spent the night in Xi'an (西安) and had some trouble finding the hostel last night, but then only to find out there was no internet in the rooms like they advertised. Then we found out after many hostels with limited or no hot water, this shower had no COLD water. I had never heard of this before, but it made for some hot showers that then proceeded to flood the room. Got that fixed and got some sleep.
Going to the Terracotta Warriors(兵馬俑)... maybe
We went to the train station to find a bus to the Terracotta Warriors and a guy approached us saying he had a bus going there and also to a couple other sites we were interested in, so we joined him. Waiting for the bus to leave, Charlotte went to get a drink. On the way back she was about to climb onto the bus when a woman behind me decided to throw out her water bottle. Now in China this means literally throwing the bottle out of the bus onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately for Charlotte, she was standing there and got hit by it, the woman who threw it said "sorry" and laughed. Charlotte luckily did not kill her, probably because earlier in our trip we had seen worse when a girl got hit in the head by the uneaten portion of corn on the cob someone threw out a bus window. The bus started going and the guide got our money for all the admissions. The first stop was a mountain (骊
山) where we took another gondola up and saw just how smoggy Xi'an is. I think on Los Angeles' worst day it was 10 times better than this. We then hiked down the mountain. This was an important mountain because Chiang Kai-shek was stationed here and a traitor in his army described his location (following picture is the view of Chang Kai-shek's office from the mountain, 華清池) , but before getting captured he ran up the mountain and hid between some rocks, however he was later discovered and forced to join forces with Mao and the communists to fight the Japanese, therefor they built an area called "Catching Chiang Kai-shek pavilion"(捉蔣亭-西安事變)
Smog? What smog?
Charlotte hanging in Chiang Kai-shek's hideout
Well he went a little higher up
After the mountain we found ourselves at a Jade shop。 Every Chinese tour must have this. Finally Charlotte asked when we would be getting to the Terracotta Warriors. The guide said, "oh most people don’t even end up wanting to go there, in fact last week someone said its not as good as the plastic colorful recreations they have setup at where we are going to next. But if you want we will go in a couple hours". To this we got very pissed off and demanded our money back and took off on our own.
Terracotta Warriors (兵馬俑)
The Terracotta Warriors were created around 210 BC as a type of funerary art and were buried with the First Emperor of Qin (秦始皇) in 210-209 BC. There were are at least 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses ranging from 6 feet to 6 feet 5 inches tall and no two are the same. They were first discovered in the 1970's by a farmer. Most still remain buried, but they have dug out quite a bit. There were a total of 3 rooms that they have so far dug out. Originally they were colorful, but the color faded as soon as they were dug out and exposed to the air. In addition, the tomb of the Emperor still remains buried.
The first room they discovered
This guy had really long arms!
A lot had broken pieces
You can really see the detail
A lot of headless ones in the 2nd room
Tons of them were broken, so they have stopped trying to recover anymore
They also found some human graves in the sight
Where can i get a pig face?
After the Terracotta Warriors, we walked around town and found a Walmart so decided to check that out, where we found some interesting things.
Want a pig face? Go to Walmart!
No power?
After
we returned to our hostel, we found the power was out. Which meant no A/C and it was 11pm and still about 80 degrees with 80% humidity. We decided to walk around and we found a KFC and I was hungry so I ordered a New Orleans style sandwich, which was actually better than anything I have had at the US KFC's. Then we found a bar and went back around 1am and the power was still out, but we felt we should sleep. The room was boiling hot so we did not sleep well.
mm it tastes like New Orleans
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