10th November 2010, Terracotta Soldiers
G&T in Terracotta
We got up at 7:30am, and had breakfast, it was nothing special. Peter our driver was waiting for us as promised.
First stop was a pottery place where they made many wonderful things, but of course amongst these were Terracotta Soldiers. We would have loved to have purchased some of the fantastic lacquered furniture with inlaid mother of pearl; really beautiful stuff, but the price and the shipping put us off. We settled on a beautiful china bowl and a teacup each; this china is so delicate and light that it is translucent, and chimes like crystal when gently tapped.
Of course we had to get a Terracotta soldier; the people were very nice but it was kind of irritating how they kept urging us to buy more stuff, and the prices were rather steep even after bargaining. Typical I guess in these type of touristy traps the world over.
The we headed on to the Terracotta soldiers. Peter parked in a back street, which turned out later to be our lunch stop. He showed us the gate and told us to take our time. I must say that the area is very nice with clean paths and trees, it’s a very beautiful place with mountains nearby. We took the electric car to where the “pits” were. One internet blog suggested doing them in reverse order 3, 2, 1… and they are right, although that is not what we did on account of the fact that nearly everything is in Chinese and we had no idea which was which until inside.
Pit No. 1 is massive, stadium size and it has literally thousands of soldiers in it. My only disappointment is that we could not get too close. There were signs everywhere saying that flash photography was forbidden, in spite of this all the Chinese tourists were taking flash pictures, presumably unable to turn the flash off on their automatic cameras.
I did not have the same buzz feeling as that of experiencing the Great Wall, but it was certainly a deeply spiritual experience being connected with the follies of a 2,200 year old Emperor. The other observation is how they are buried, in rows of four abreast with walls and then another row four abreast etc. Every so often there are larger walls, which give the feeling of a city or tomb. The scale and the detail is astonishing, as is the number of soldiers and horses which survived the years intact.
We walked back passing many tourist shops. These seemed to sell the same old rubbish and seemed far too numerous to make a living from the passing tourists. We did buy a bottle of Pomegranate wine, which was quite curious.
Lunch was in someone’s living room, or at least that is how it felt…
- Fried egg plant (aubergene)
- Fried Pork strips in Sweet and Sour Sauce
- Spicy Chicken (which was not spicy)
- White rice
Washed down with a little Tsing Tao and some tea.
I can’t say this was a great gastronomic meal, but it was whole and hearty and it filled a spot, we’ll just leave it at that.
Back to town and we crashed in our apartment size room. Given it’s spaciousness and the fact that we were tired, we decided on in room dining, again nothing really note worthy, but good decent fair non the less.
Like all armies there were some casualties
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