We hired a car and driver to go to the Terracotta Army, the Qin tomb and the Great Goose Pagoda. The Terracotta Army is only part of the much larger burial site call Qin Shihuang Ling built by the first Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. We hire an official English-speaking guide to tour the Terracotta Army which, given the crowds and the size and complexity of the site is a good move and is definitely the most effective way to navigate it. The warriors were guardians of the Emperor’s tomb and we drive the mile or so the Qin Tomb itself. The tomb has never been opened but it is possible to climb to the top and walk around the gardens at the base. The Great Goose Pagoda, which we visit on the way back, is a Buddhist temple – very different in style to the ones we visited in Mongolia and simpler and less ornate than the palaces and heaven worship temples we visited in Beijing.
After our Great Wall experience we decided that if we had our own driver we would be able to set the itinerary and dictate the pace. How naïve we were! The driver seems to have different ideas and keeps telling us that the Great Goose Pagoda is a different tour and that the Qin Tomb isn’t worth visiting. Only after much insistence on our part and a call to his office do we get what we want, but we still end up at a factory producing models of the warriors and lacquered furniture. Quite interesting, but the inevitable conclusion is the sales pitch. We are strong and walk out empty-handed much to the disappointment of our factory guide.
The warriors have been excavated from three pits of varying sizes all of which are open to the public. The largest and most impressive of the pits is the size of an enormous aircraft hanger and this is where the vanguard and most of the ordinary soldiers are found. A fourth pit is empty suggesting that the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi died before the project was completed.
Some 7,000 warriors have been found so far, lined in military formation four abreast and separated by walls which originally were covered with wooden beams and matting before being buried under earth. Over time, the wooden beams have rotted or been burned by looters destroying all but one of the warriors – a kneeling archer. The rest of the warriors on display have been restored from the broken remains. There is a major, on-going restoration project to put all the warriors back in their original positions.
Apparently there are thousands of warriors still buried and won’t be excavated the technology is available to preserve the original colours of the statues, which fade and disappear on exposure to the air.
The Qin Tomb is a 154-foot-high man-made mound covering 22 square miles and containing, according to historical records, a splendid necropolis depicting the whole of China in minature. The tomb has never been opened and so it’s only possible to climb to the top (from which the views must be splendid if it were not for the enveloping smog) and walk round the gardens at the base.
The Great Goose Pagoda turns out to be a full blown monastery set in landscape gardens in a modern part of Xi’an. We climb the pagoda for a panoramic view of the city and wander the gardens which, rather than being the tranquil place you might expect, are filled with blaring pop music! The Chinese don’t seem to be able to live without noise.
Today has given us a different perspective of Xi’an. Outside the city walls there is an extensive building programme in progress creating dozens of high rise apartment blocks as well as some low-rise housing and the regeneration of public spaces, which is resulting in a much cleaner, modern and altogether more pleasant Xi’an.
Some background on Xi’an:
Xi’an and the Shaanxi region are the centre of early Chinese civilisation. The Zhou dynasty (from 11th century BC) was established here and was followed by the state of Qin (pronounced ‘Chin’) which unified China. The Silk Road linking China to central Asia also began here. Xi’an served as the country’s capital for more than 1100 years and it was from here that the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi unified China. During the Tang dynasty (618 – 907) it was the biggest city in the world. Today it is home to 2.6 million people. The old city is surrounded by a reconstructed wall 40 foot thick (dating from the Ming dynasty). The streets in the old town still retain the classic Chinese pattern running straight north-south and east-west intersecting at right angles.