Terracotta warriors and more 27th June

After a much needed lie in and missing breakfast in the hotel, there was only one place to go to get the morning food “Starbucks”. Western culture has finally filtered the Chinese culture along with MacDonald’s and KFC. I have been enjoying the Chinese cuisine so did not have the western food except for a Vanilla Thick shake as the temperature is still rising the more east we go.
So, time to wander this city Xi’an, which was the original capital of China after the unification of the seven provinces, in 200 BC. It’s a walled city which is complete and you can cycle around the whole perimeter on top. I know it does not look that hot due to the smog but it was over 40 Deg C on the wall



This is very modern and everyone is so westernised. I do not know what I was expecting but not a scene from any European city with Designer shops and fashion shops.


It does have its older areas which are for more of the creative artistic stuff




So back to the hotel to get freshened up for the group meal which will be dumplings followed by a show

The steamed dumplings where excellent and they are made in different shapes to symbolise what the filling is
Have a guess at this one????????????????????


Then it was back to the hotel for 10:00 to watch a very disappointing England get hammered by the Germans (being Polite) in the world cup over a glass of wine
The following morning was to visit the Terracotta Warriors which the city is famous for. No one knew of their existence until in 1974 a local farmer was digging a well and unearthed some parts of the warriors. He took it to the local civil servants who did not know what they were and it took over a month before some Archaeologists got all excited and the whole project started. The position of the well is in one of the photos where the sign of number 1 is!






All the figures have different faces and different sizes of body and there is over 7000 of them but many have been left covered by the earth as they found that when open to the air the faded to the earthen colour that you can see
The pictures here are of a thin guy and a smiley one along with a photo of the original colours when first uncovered. You must also remember that they were all broken and it is an on-going process o put them all back together again





Ok, do not want to bore you with too much of this stuff but I would recommend that if you are in the area, to pop in and have a nose around

11104 miles – Xi’an, China