The waiting for passports is never a predictable matter. In Johannesburg we were running late for our flight (that itself would later never leave the ground) and people were getting tense when the passports were gone for over ten minutes. In Ho Chi Minh City all the passports were given back, and I didn’t have mine yet, and then we found out there was a second pile, and mine was in there. In Hong Kong we didn’t even have to group the passports because we all went up to the counter individually, which was clearly the best course of action. There, the passport never left my eyesight. Here, the waiting game was on.
Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Then we were going on fifteen, and we all stood around like silly Americans that have no idea what we’re doing in China. And that was a very correct statement at the time. In this waiting time, I keep my eyes on the lookout for someone, anyone, to walk out with a stack of passports with boarding passes sticking out of them. Then I saw them. And somehow mine was one of the first ones out. What was up with that.
They told us that we would need to get moving to the gate because again, we were cutting it close again. Yet there was a problem. Nobody knew the gate or terminal. After getting through security, we all started trying to decipher the screens to see where we needed to go because the information wasn’t on the boarding passes, in English anyway. You would think these screens would be relatively easy to decipher, but he organization with the letters and numbers was not smart. Someone thought they had the terminal figured out, so we all rushed that way.
As we shuffled through the airport, it appeared that our gate loomed in what looked like a temporary terminal. And if it wasn’t temporary, it should be. The floor of the terminal was on the same level as the tarmac for the planes and there was no cool air on, so it was a large, stuffy, warm room with uncomfortable chairs to wait around in. There was apparently free wireless internet, though.
Once we were in that terminal, there were more screens, but our flight was not on any of them. There was a rumor going around that someone had seen our flight appear on it and we were all in the right spot, but that was an unverified report. I stood in front of those screens for a few minutes, to no avail, before figuring that if everyone else is here, the rumor must be correct. And if it was wrong, we’d all be wrong together.
I went back and looked at the screens a few minutes later and our flight had magically appeared, almost as if it wasn’t supposed to be on the screen until now.
Not long after, boarding began. And if they didn’t hand out the passports alphabetically, we sure were seated alphabetically. I had to sit in the last row on the Johannesburg to Cape Town flight about a month prior and there was no way I ever wanted to sit in the back row ever again. The seats do not recline at all, there is less leg room, it takes forever to get on and off the plane, and there’s just no positive to sit there.
I was in the last row of the plane with the Wayland-Smiths. I was on the aisle, so at least I could stick my legs out a little bit. Giles is a professor on the ship and his wife, Kate, has come along on the voyage. They are two of the most wonderful people and they made it much easier to spend two hours in the back row of an airplane.
I pulled out my Sudoku book that I bought way back in Brazil, and still haven’t gotten close to completing because I only pull it out for flights (and not like there’s a shortage of those), and I did a couple of those puzzles. They’re very helpful during take-off at that moment where the engines slow down and I think that means were going to crash.
Before we departed, they showed the same video we saw in the Hong Kong flight. There’s one part where they show the people exiting the plane in the emergency escape slide. It’s very funny because the people do it in slow motion in yellow jumpsuits very calmly. There’s no way a real-life usage of the escape slide would remotely resemble that.
I don’t know if it was because I was in the back of the plane, but the flight was a little bumpier than my past few flights have been. We might have flown over some mountains along the way, too. I’m not exactly sure what’s between Beijing and Xi’an. And to be honest, while we were flying through the air, I wasn’t exactly sure where Xi’an was in relation to Beijing. I know it’s further inland, but I don’t know if it’s more south or west of Beijing. I’ll have to look at the world map on the wall of the room when I get back to the ship.
As we came in for landing they pulled down the video again so that we could see us land with the camera attached to the airplane. That view, no matter how many times you see it, never makes you feel any better. It’s like sitting in the passenger seat of a car and wanting to press the brake on your side of the car.
Of the two tour guides that accompanied us through Beijing, only one joined us on the flight out to Beijing. He was the guide for the other bus, so I really hoped, as did those also on my bus, that people would remain on the same bus group that they started the trip on. I liked my spot on the less rowdy bus with all the professors and my less rowdy friends.
So we landed and headed towards the exit of the airport, but we stopped before leaving. Dinner tonight was in the airport restaurant. I know what you’re thinking: is it a nice airport restaurant, or a not-so-nice restaurant? Starting the theme of the next 24-hours or so, our guides took us to a not-so-nice restaurant in the Xi’an airport. After inquiring about what would be served, some of the group dissented.
The dissension stemmed from the fact that dinner was not going to be that great, as evidenced by the fact that we were eating in the Xi’an airport. When asked if there was a place to eat back at the hotel, the guides said that there was. The issue was whether or not people wanted to forego their already-paid-for meal in the Xi’an airport and instead get something to eat over at the hotel. The group was split. My logic was that this meal was already paid for so I might as well stay for it. If it’s no good, then it’s no good and I can get something to eat back at the hotel. Plus, I was hungry. Flying works up an appetite.
The group was split almost evenly. About half of the people from my non-rowdy bus wanted out, and about half from the rowdy bus didn’t want to eat there. Because both buses were waiting outside the airport, one bus would take half the group back to the hotel early, while the other bus would wait for the rest of us to finish dinner.
And so, half our group left with the guide from Beijing, and the rest of us stayed for dinner. It was not long into dinner and not long after the bus left that I, and quite a few others, realized that we may have not made the right call. Dinner was what I’ll call less than spectacular. The service was horrid. And we sat at the large table with the lazy susan, so all service entails is putting enough food on the table and assisting with beverages. I guess that was too much to ask for. There was plenty of white sticky rice. And I had my fill of that, as well as trying a bunch of the other stuff. I don’t want to make it sound like all I had was rice. I ate enough to be full, and most of that wasn’t rice.
Once we were all done with dinner, or rather dinner was done with us based on the overall mood in the restaurant in the Xi’an airport, we headed out to the bus for the ride to the airport. It was dark out and I expected the ride to be quiet because we had all had a long and busy day. We as passengers were very quite and trying to nap, but our guide at the front of the bus was fervent to tell us the entire history of Xi’an. As time went on and the drive dragged on, it became clear that this hotel was nowhere near the airport. In fact, it was over an hour away. The city of Xi’an is actually over an hour away from the Xi’an airport. And the guide talked for the entire drive. She did not shut up. A while into the drive, it was clear that we were not paying attention at all, and I felt bad, but there was nothing I could do. The sound of her voice permeated through the entire bus, and even when some of the more rowdy passengers tempted their rowdiness, she didn’t stop. It was sheer torture.
We finally pull up to the hotel and check-in. It’s sorta late but I went back downstairs to sit with some people from the earlier group who hadn’t eaten yet, as well as some people from my group who also hadn’t eaten yet. The food looked better, but it seemed a little off. There wasn’t something that I could put my finger on, but the french fries did not appear well.
After dinner had concluded, I had to get to bed. Tomorrow was the big day in Xi’an with the Terra Cotta Warriors. I’ve waited the whole voyage for this stop, and there was nothing that was going to keep me away from it. But there sure would be something to make the day even more memorable.
Last night they told us that we would have a wake-up call. I assumed that the phrase ‘a wake-up call’ would mean one wake-up call. Let’s go over the sequence of events of the morning. I knew that we had to be out and on the bus by 8:30, so there was going to be a 7am wake-up call. (Again, with the waking up early.) So I went to bed expecting to get up then.
The roommate’s alarm clock went off at 6:20. He got up turned it off and went back to bed. It woke me up, and I wasn’t entirely sure if the alarm was an error or he actually set it up to go off. Ten minutes later the phone rings at 6:30 to wake up the roommate. I’m awake because I haven’t had the chance to fall back asleep yet, but I lay in bed with my eyes closed.
If this is the wake-up call that we were all getting, I don’t think my roommate would have gotten up and walked out the door. So now I’m laying in bed trying to figure out if there will actually be the promised 7am wake-up call. I figure there will be, and it’s not like I’m going to fall back asleep at this point. I would have gotten up but breakfast wasn’t open yet and I’d be sitting around. I have no idea where the roommate went off to.
Still awake from the earlier barrage of alarm clocks, the 7am wake-up call came as scheduled, and I got right out of bed because I had been up for the last 40 minutes anyway. I dressed, freshened up and went down for breakfast. Yesterday, they told us that breakfast would be a ‘western-style’ breakfast, meaning that breakfast would be foods that we were familiar with, as opposed to local food. Apparently the Chinese are not known for the breakfast choices.
And as I learned, the Chinese are also not known for their western breakfasts either. Although, I have to say that I am not an impartial judge. I’m not a big fan of breakfast anyway, and with that in mind, this morning breakfast was particularly not incredibly enjoyable. Pretty bad, actually. I had some fruit and I forced down a couple other items. The others who like breakfast didn’t seem to think that it was the most stellar of meals either. And there’s nothing like a stron hearty breakfast before embarking out upon our not-to-be-forgotten day.
After breakfast we loaded up onto our two buses. Thankfully, everyone stuck to the same bus that we started out on in Beijing. There was the rowdy bus, and then there was the bus half-filled with professors – and to refresh your memory, I was on the latter. Once we were on the buses, the guide on our bus gave us a bit of a heads up as to what was happening later in the day. We were visiting some other sites in Xi’an in the morning and would be going to the Terra Cotta Warriors this afternoon. However, there is a foreign delegation at the warriors today so our schedule may shift. Nobody knows how or when the schedule will shift, but if it does, it will only be about 10-30 minutes shifted. With that bit of business out of the way, onward we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda.
Instead of first going to the Wild Goose Pagoda, we went next door to the Wild Goose Pagoda Art Museum. I’m pretty sure that’s not the actual name of the place, but I can’t seem to think of a better name for it, or be aware of what the actual name of the place is. The best part of the place was what we passed on the way in. Not only were there people doing tai chi, but there were people doing tai chi with swords. With swords!
On first glance, it looks very cool until you realize that the fundamental key to tai chi is moving very slowly. So if these people were moving at a fast-forward speed, it would be great to watch. These people were moving at a snail’s pace. So while, fascinating and very cool to see, it gets older the longer you look at it. But still, more interesting than the entire Wild Goose Pagoda Art Museum.
So they put us with a tour guide, a perky one at that, as they walked us through the art museum. It wasn’t set up like a typical museum. To go from room to room you had to go outside and then back in the next door. There’s a picture below that gives the general idea of what the place looks like, with a glimpse of the pagoda in the background in the lot next door.
The architecture in China is unlike anything else in the world. It is unique to solely China, even though the untrained eye would get confused with the stuff in Japan. But I found it fascinating that as wonderful as the structures are in China, they don’t always seem to be on top of things in terms of general maintenance. Take the museum for instance. Inside it was clean and well taken care-of. The grounds looked kempt. But the roofs were another story. Structurally, I’m sure they were passable, but this was all over them:
It just seems to me that having the roots of a plant penetrate into the roof of a building is not going to be beneficial in the long run. I could be wrong and they could have been planted there as some kind of rich history and tradition in China – but I’m pretty sure I’m right, because those plants sure looked they didn’t need to be there. What’s nice is that they’re not weeds. They appear to have some sort of woody base, which is nice to see.
Anyway, we were led from room to room to look at paintings and artwork that wasn’t all that impressive. A large portion of it had worn away over the years so the guide was telling us what it used to be instead of what it is. And a lot of the artwork is period-specific, in that you have to know what was going on at the time of the painting to get its significance. The guide tried her best to convey that to us, but after a while, it all blends together and you just go along with it.
At the other end of the museum was what I at first thought was a calligraphy lesson, but it was more of a calligraphy/painting demonstration. The Chinese use a certain type of brush and ink to do their paintings and it looked like it was all in the wrist, so I certainly don’t have a future in this sort of thing. After the short demonstration, they shut the door behind us and told us that all of the paintings hanging up around us were for sale, and we could look around and buy if we were so inclined.
Between departing China and arriving in Japan (only two days apart) I have a paper due for art history where we have to find some kind of artwork and write about it using terms and stuff we’ve learning in class, as well as a comparison to western art. So I’ve been on the prowl for something good to compare. And one of the paintings on the wall looked very interesting and I instantly thought that I could write about it. The way it’s painted is fascinating. I took out my camera and took a photo of it. Here it is:
No sooner did I snap a photo was there a frantic shout from a woman behind me, proclaiming, “No photos!” I apologize and quickly put my camera away, but the damage was done – I had my photo for my art history paper and I could get that thought off of my head. We were still shut in that room for another ten or twenty minutes wandering around looking at art that a bunch of college students were not going to buy. And the reason why we were shut in the room in the first place is because most tours that come through there are wealthy, old foreigners. And they actually buy the art. They haven’t learned that they’re just wasting their time with us.
I’m not so sure why we were so excited to get outside. The photo above shows the sky as anything but blue. And when they finally let us outside the gift shop, I took a photo of the sun. Yes, believe it or not, behind all that smog, the sun is shining behind there – somewhere.
The perky tour guide departed us and we made our walk over to the actual pagoda now, because apparently that stop at the museum was necessary. I know I’m supposed to be exposing myself to the culture and experiencing China, but I’ve got to try to do that with something that can keep my attention span, as well as the attention span of a group of very tired and over-sensitized college students. It just didn’t work well.
The pagoda is a Buddhist pagoda built in the seventh century but has been rebuilt a number of times over the years due to earthquakes and what we’ll call daily ‘wear-and-tear.’ When we get to the pagoda, the group I’ve been hanging out with decide that they’re really not interested in walking around, and they’d rather look around the gift shop here, or sit around. As uninterested as I may be in this pagoda that you have to pay to go inside, I’m still going to do what I can to experience it.
But I walk over to the gift shop first just to see what’s going on in there, because it seems overly active. And it was exactly what you would think the gift shop would be. A bunch of stuff that’s almost enough to make you want to buy something, but you really don’t need it at all. In the back of the store (anytime you hear ‘back of store’ you should get cautious) there was this wacky thing that related to your zodiac sign and once you figured what it was, you would then have to buy something. I didn’t buy it.
On my way walking through the grounds, I found my new friends the Wayland-Smiths and I asked them to take a photo of me in front of the pagoda. It seems like a simple request, but there was a problem in where I asked the question, and I did not realize this at the time. I was standing a few feet in front of the pagoda and to get any of the pagoda into the photo meant asking these kind, older travelers to get down low to the ground in an incredibly awkward pose to get as much of the pagoda in the view as possible, and they did an admirable job given the amount of room they had and the unique restrictions surrounding the photo. Here’s how it came out.
I really can’t complain about the photo, but after they left, I took a photo of the top half of the pagoda. Then I came back and brought it into Photoshop, and this is what I was able to do with it:
All things considered, that’s pretty good if I do say so myself. I and so say so myself. And get a look at that sky! Isn’t that just stunning. As I continued my trek around the grounds, I passed by a fellow traveler whom I still do not know the name of, and don’t think I’ve ever said two words to, and that person asked if I’d like a photo in front of the pagoda. I can’t say no, and then the woman took a photo of me, but it wasn’t in front of the wild goose pagoda, rather a pagoda-like gazebo about forty feet away from the big pagoda.
It actually turned out to be a rather nice photo. Again, the problem being that I have no idea what I’m standing in front of, other than a decorative-looking pagoda-like gazebo. As I continued to circle around the pagoda, I tried to take a photo of myself in front of it. You may be saying to yourself that there’s no way I can do it. If the Wayland-Smith could not achieve it, than it cannot be done! Well, I had to try.
At the very least, I got all the pagoda in the photo, but other than that, it’s nothing spectacular. So at this point now, I’m feeling a little frisky with the camera as I try to figure out new and interesting ways to photograph myself, as clearly the self-portrait route is the way to go. And as I’ve now had this camera for over three months, I figured it was time to start playing around with the timer buttons to see what kind of trouble I could get into there.
I walked around and found a little garden area with some stone tigers (or are they lions?) in the area. And I thought that it was a photo op. No one being around me, I used the time delay to take the following photos:
So at this point, I’m done at the Wild Goose Pagoda, but we’ve still go some time left. So I find where my friends are sitting around and I see them with ice cream. Mind you, it’s still around 10 in the morning. But just like I did at the Great Wall, I went over and found a Magnum bar and had it as my brunch. I was hungry as breakfast didn’t do a whole lot for me, and lunch was still a while a way.
Next on the Xi’an fun tour was the Shaanxi History Museum. Let’s make sure I make clear what this place is. This is a history museum with artifacts from Chinese history. I know a great deal about American history, and it takes something to keep my attention in those museums. I have a very general overview of Chinese history, so this museum was going to have to be something special to keep my attention.
But before we entered into the museum, our guide sat us down and started talking to us. And she talked, and she talked, and she talked. I was sitting there looking around at the group and none of us appeared to be paying attention in the slightest. You tend to think pity on the guide for having no one pay attention to her, but you have to remember the pain that she is inflicting upon us in return, so there’s nothing to feel sorry for. After what seemed like a mild eternity, she let us go, and that wasn’t all much better.
To the Chinese, this may have been the most fascinating museum in the country. To me and my fellow travelers, this was sheer torture and boredom to the extreme. And we had something like an hour and a half here. It was painful. After a while, I started taking pictures of some of the stuff we were looking at just to find a more sufficient way to pass the time. This stuff wasn’t even interesting to the slightest degree.
And you would think that a dagger on display from around 948 BC would be something impressive. Believe it or not, it’s really not. It looks like a three-thousand year-old dagger. Just as you would think it would. And it keeps your interest for a few seconds. The five-thousand year-old jars were not much more interesting either. Actually, a jar is much less interesting than a dagger, no matter the age.
But if anything were to keep my interest, and I mean anything, it would be the skulls. One of the skulls was from 200,000 years ago. But then the one next to it claims to be from 1.15 million years ago. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that humans weren’t around that long ago. It did identify the skull as belonging to Lantian Man, but I’m pretty sure that the ‘Man’ refers to a human man. So I’m not saying that this gets added to the list of shams, but I’m just saying that something seems fishy. And judging by what they had on display for the skull, they seemed to have added a bit to it.
I really wish there were more to tell you about the museum. We walked around through the two halves, which didn’t appear to have any kind of thematic separation. We wandered around trying to figure out what we were looking at and why we should care. In the center of the museum was a little bench and we tried to pass some time there between halves of the museum. There really was nothing that I looked at where I stood astonished by what was in front of me.
Once my group was done with the museum we went outside where a bunch of other people were already waiting for our time to end. Included in that bunch was my art history professor. So I didn’t feel incredibly bad about not staying inside longer, because if she can’t take it any longer, then I’ve nothing to feel ashamed about.
Our group outside grew and grew until it was finally time to leave and head out to lunch. This museum was still in the city limits of Xi’an, and the restaurant is much closer to the warriors, which are very far outside of town. They’re really not in Xi’an. And even while we were on the bus to lunch, our guide was unmerciful and talked us to death.
Although, there was one interesting item of discussion. There were more details about our arrival at the Terra Cotta Warriors. Due to the foreign delegation’s delay, we would be skipping the shopping mall out in front and they would take us in an alternative entrance, that would drop us off right in front of the warrior area. The foreign delegation is still at the warriors and details of our schedule were still up in the air, but we would definitely still make it to the warriors today. And even after this announcement, we were still talked to death by our guide. At this point, the natives are growing restless with our leader. We’ve had enough talking.
At the restaurant they sit us on the far side of this giant room at giant tables with lazy susans. I’m getting sick of these lazy susans and the food that they feed us on it. And beverages are incredibly complicated. You have to share from the bottles at the other tables because there’s not an even distribution of them through the area. Sometimes the food is different from table to table, and organization never seems to be of the utmost importance. And all of this is really growing old on me. I’m longing to eat at a table without a lazy susan, and to have my food come on a plate of my own, but I’ve got a feeling that’s not going to happen while I’m in China.
As we’re eating, our chatty guide comes around and informs us that the delegation is scheduled to leave at 2:30, so to pass some of the extra time, we would remain and hang out longer at lunch until it was time to depart. Also, if we were so inclined, next door to lunch was a silk shop where we could go watch people make silk. And I’m sure, if we were so inclined, to purchase some silk. I don’t need any silk, so I was in no rush to head over there.
At some point during lunch, the guide comes around again, and as I’m curious, I ask what country this foreign delegation is from. The guide said that she did not know the country of origin. And if we don’t hear, we could check the news on television tonight to see who was there. But our guide also said that she would probably be back too late because we were seeing a show tonight and we would be back after the news had already ended.
So, for as long as I can make it in the restaurant, I find it’s time to start doing something else than chatting, so the last two tables get up and head over to the silk place to see if there’s entertainment there, because this waiting is really not all it’s cracked up to be. The silk place had a place to buy silk in front, and then they had the back part of the store where they make the silk. And when we came in, we were told that we just missed the demonstration about how the turn the raw stuff that the silkworm produces into string form, and then weaved into fabric. It looks like incredibly boring and tedious work, so I’m rather glad I’m not going to be doing that for a living. Because if I lived in China, that would be a distinct career possibility, if you know what I mean.
I wasn’t in the silk place for long before word started getting around that it was finally time to get out and load back on the buses. So now we’re on the buses and we get some more about the foreign delegation. We’ve still got about a half hour drive ahead of us, and by the time we get there the foreign delegation should have left. Our guides went on to tell us that we should not ask the guards about the recently departed delegation, as they’re not going to know anything. She then went into a story about when President Clinton came out to visit there was the same song and dance about security and secrecy and shutting the place down for him. At this point in the day and the story, I, as well as everyone else, are increasingly questioning what we’re hearing about the foreign delegation. Something doesn’t seem to add up right, but we can’t put our finger on exactly what’s going awry.
I immediately flashed back to India when we were at the fort in Jaipur and we were supposed to ride the elephants to the top, but we were told it was a national holiday and we would be unable to do that. But as soon as we get up to the top of the fort, we see that the elephants are running up and down, seemingly on schedule. That lie burned a lot of people, but I just went with it. Some people took that trip for the sole purpose of riding those elephants. I didn’t; I forgot we were riding elephants until after I was reminded during the trip. What’s happening now in China is a momentary moment of panic where I don’t know if we’re going to see the warriors, or if were going to be in for a rude slap in the face.
Nonetheless, the bus trudged onward to the site. We arrived at the gate that allows us to skip the shopping mall, as promised, and went right in. There were some odd exchanges with guards talking to the bus driver and guide as we pulled in, but as long as we were going to be let off the bus, I didn’t care. The guide then tells us that she talked to the guard and that the buses can’t go any further and we would have to walk to the entrance. It wasn’t a far walk, but we were getting off the bus.
As we exited the bus, we noticed an incredibly strange sight. For being shut down with the foreign delegation recently exited, there seemed to be an awful lot of people around. Enough people to the point where all of these people could not have entered within the last half hour. And there was no line at the entrance either. This was when the pieces began to coalesce.
We followed our guide through the entrance. The way the place is set up is that there are four different sites, each in its own warehouse/airplane hangar type of building. There’s the main building, and then there are the neighboring sites, each one in its own building. Before we’re let loose with the 90 minutes that we were granted, our guide takes us over into a corner and starts talking to us. She loves the sound of her voice, and none of us can take it anymore. We’ve waited for months to get here, and we’re right outside the door, and she wants to lecture us. Absolutely nobody was paying attention. The history professor was not paying attention. We were just waiting for her to let us go, and trying to be polite by not walking off in the middle of her self-serving speech about something. I thought she would be talking for a short time, because there’s no way that anyone would do this to these poor, already tortured, silly Americans.
She blabbed for 20 minutes. I was beside myself, looking for an escape route. I didn’t find an easy escape route. But if she went on for a few more minutes, I was going to high-tail out of there, escape route or not. But before she finally let us go, she said that we were to meet her back in that same spot in a half hour. Then she let us go. Knowing that I had some of my time cruched as it was, there was no way I was going to meet her back there for more lecture. In fact, nobody met her back there at 3:30. We knew where the bus was, and we knew when we had to be back there. And that was all that mattered.
So my friend Rhea and I decide to stick together to get as much done as possible in whatever was left of our time. We go into the main building first, where the largest excavation is located, and the only was to describe the Terra Cotta Warriors is spendictacular. They are absolutely unbelievable. The magnitude upon which the scale is, is just extraordinary. This is the view you have when you walk in:
But to be honest, there was a part of me that was, shall I say, let down slightly. From what glimpses I had seen of this hangar these warriors are in, I thought that the entire place had already been excavated, and the entire floor would be the army. Instead, as you can see in the photo, there’s the first quarter with the warriors excavated and restored, then there’s a smattering of warriors in hundreds and hundreds of pieces in various states of excavation, and then there’s the sections that have yet to be touched. The excavation is still in its very early stages. I didn’t know that.
Towards the back of the hangar were some active reassembly projects. I was annoyed that there was nobody there working on them now, and assumed that they were active works, and not just meant to look like active works. There really should have been people working on putting the pieces back together, because I could have watched that for hours and hours. But, we had a schedule, as well as two other pits to see.
What’s also important to remember is that in terms of ‘doing,’ there is little to do. The signs (that have English) are small and don’t take long to read. What there is, is what is sitting in front of you. And you have to stop and marvel every chance you get. To comprehend that this is an army buried with the intention of coming to life should the important guy they were buried with be disturbed. And as far as I know, they know who the guy is, but have not excavated his body. And judging by the progress in the excavation happening while I was there, I am not in danger.
So my group and I slowly move around the interior perimeter of the hangar. Stopping every so often to look at the new angle and see something that we haven’t seen before. Towards the back there is very little. In the photo above are some horses that look to be recently, or nearing, their restoration. I had to have a photo of me and the horse’s rears. Don’t ask why. The photo just begged to be taken.
If you’ve taken note of my travels through Asia, and specifically China, there are tour groups from other areas of Asia, and they travel in impassable packs. The walkway in the hangar is maybe ten feet, and sometimes there was no getting around it without a little gentle pushing and shoving. It’s not like there’s something special in the part they are (other than their tour guide). There is nobody at the railing fifteen feet away. I tend to prefer a free and clear view.
At this point in our stop here at the warriors, the half hour has passed to meet back with the tour guide for more lectures, and nobody went back. We’re still on the opposite side of the hangar. I can’t rush the moment. To think of where I am still blows my mind. Perhaps my thoughts are best captured with this video I took of myself there:
Around this point, the group starts to split as people want to see everything in a slightly different order, so I hang around with my friend Rhea for the rest of the warriors. We make our way back towards the entrance and see that the crowd on the way in had diminished. On the way in, there was a crowd seven people deep to see the place, but if you walked twenty feet to the left, there was nobody. Go figure. So we get over towards the front and take a few nice unobstructed photos.
At this point we figure that we’re going to have to get a move on to see everything so we head over to the pit next door. This pit wasn’t nearly as big or nearly as excavated, hence why nobody knows that there are multiple pits. Pit 2 is different because it consists of mixed military forces, like archers, war chariors, cavalrymen, and infantrymen. It’s in a bit of an ‘L’ shape, and still takes quite a bit of time to walk around. It’s also not nearly as well-lit, so the photos are spotty. It’s also barely excavated.
As you can see, there’s less to look at, so you can’t spend as much time here as you would at the other pits, just based on the size. And because I’m all about saving time and seeing as much as possible, leaving the back door of Pit 2 takes you to Pit 3. So we decided to exit Pit 2 halfway around, and head out to Pit 3. Pit 3 is smaller still. A little better lit, but the warriors are much lower in the pit, so it makes photographing both uncomfortable and difficult.
Pit 3 is known as the command center of pits 1 and 2, but they say history has been unkind to this pit, as only 68 figures are around. Perhaps there were only 68 to begin with. Who needs more than 68 people to tell everyone what to do. In fact, this is about all there is to Pit 3, below. Not an incredible amount, yet congruence with everything else on site, it’s all still unbelievable.
We have only until 4:30 to make it back to the bus, so it’s not that we’re starting to get close on time, but if we dilly dally on something – it has to be worth dilly dallying on, moreso than the average of what we’re seeing. And Pit 3 didn’t really warrant hanging around for an extended time. We circumnavigated the perimeter of the pit. There was nothing but the figures in the front of the pit, so once we wound back to the front, we headed back out the door to complete the loop back around Pit 2.
On the other side of Pit 2 were some of the more intact warriors in display cases. There was an archer without the bow and arrow. That rotted away centuries ago. There was a guy with a horse. Amongst others as well. We walked through because there was another building that we had yet to see. We weren’t sure if it was another pit or something else, but we had to make sure that we saw that, too. So we expedited our walk through the other half of Pit 2 to get to the other building.
The other building is more of a museum and place where they try to take your money. There may have also been a gift shop, but I’m not too sure on that one. It seemed like the original purpose of the building was to display a miniature painted chariot and horses that had been excavated thirty years ago. As impressive as that miniature thing was, it didn’t need a whole new building for it. They seemed to have struggled to figure out what else to put into the building. It did not keep my attention at all.
We decided to cut out losses and head back out. At this point, we haven’t got long before we have to meet back, but we have just enough time to go back into Pit 1 one more time. You have to. It’s something that I’m not going to see again for a while, so to get one last look at it is important. Even when we walked in the second time, and at this point there were many less people here, it still is awe inspiring. Now there was nobody right at the front, where everyone crowded around earlier, and it really is the best way to see the space. You don’t get to see the detail from up there, but you get a good appreciation for just the scope of it all.
And it was at this point that it hit me. I’ve waited for the entire trip to be here. And the time for it to come to an end was upon us. I’ve always known this was a place that I couldn’t stay in forever, because that’s just silly. I’d always have to enter and exit. But what struck me was that I know that I’ll get back one day and, hopefully, they’ll have done some more excavation and the sight will be even more impressive. It’s not that I want to walk back in and not recognize the place, but I want to walk in remembering this very moment, and still be mesmerized. That’s all I want. And with that, we turned around and headed outside.
But where I thought the fun would end, I was wrong. The real fun was only just beginning. I didn’t think there would be mind games going on, but there were, and they sure were fun to get into. I see a small group of us outside in the plaza, one of which is my history professor, Dr. Joyce. Dr. Joyce then begins to recount her investigation into this foreign delegation.
If you remember, upon arriving there were an awful lot of people about to have just arrived if the place reopened. So Dr. Joyce somehow found a group of guys from, of all places, Cincinnati and asked them how long they’ve been here. They said that they’d been there since ten o’clock that morning. Dr. Joyce asked about the foreign delegation, and they said that there was no foreign delegation. There’s more to this section of the story, but that comes in a bit later. This was all I learned at the time.
So we’d been had by our guides – sort of. It’s not like we never made it to the warriors. Then we’d really have been had, as well as furious and angry. In the end this lie that we were fed only effected us marginally in that we went to the warriors a little later than we were expected to. But while it only marginally effected us, there was a greater impetus for the guides to lie to us.
As we meet back up on the bus and the truth and rumors swirl with one another, as best as we can figure at the time, here’s what we think happened: Semester at Sea has a policy that because we are on an educational voyage, all the of the tour groups are strictly instructed to cut out the stops at shops, as they are not educational. This however did not stop any other trip that I have ever been on. We went to multiple shops on every other tour that I’ve been on. We did in the Amazon, India, and Vietnam. This is nothing unusual.
But when this tour company was contacted we were originally supposed to go through the supposedly massive shops that lead into the warriors. We skipped those. As the guides would not be getting their commission for dragging us through there, they had to get their commission another way. And didn’t it seem like a bit of a coincidence that the silk shop was right next to the restaurant, and we just happened to be delayed on our day’s events while we were there? And the reason why we stayed there at the restaurant was because the foreign delegation was at the warriors. And it was just the cover that was needed for the guides to reap their commission from the silk shop for making us bored enough to wander in there, after being suggested to wander in there by the guides.
And that was the best we could figure the story.
When we arrived back at the hotel, after the information download the entire bus ride back (and it was a long download because we hit all the Xi’an rush hour traffic – who knew Xi’an had a rush hour?), our trip guide Simon asked us to remain on the bus while the guides departed before us. Usually this is not a good sign. I remember from my school days that this was usually followed with some sort of riot act reading. Instead, he filled in some more details about the foreign delegation.
He elaborated that someone on the trip, who he did not name (and I later found out was Dr. Joyce), confronted one of the guides that she lied about there being a foreign delegation. The guide was caught in a lie. She panicked and completely broke down, wanting to quit our tour and get away. She cried, which I’m still unconvinced was not part of the act, and eventually Simon convinced to remain on the trip. But he told us that although this foreign delegation was a lie, we should maintain the courtesy of not bringing it up again to the guides.
We agreed and thanked him for smoothing the situation over and going over it with all of us together so that we’re all pretty much on the same page with whatever just happened.
And that is the end of the story of the foreign delegation. But before I wrap up the story for good, there’s one more bit of info that I learned yet later on. Simon and his wife Anne Claire met the guides for dinner very late the night before. Simon was thinking that they were going to go over the next day’s events, but that didn’t exactly happen. The guides largely ignored Simon and his wife, and essentially told them that there was never any intention, past or present, to take us through the large shopping area outside the warriors. Taking us through the shortcut was the plan, and was always the plan. Which begs the question: do they pull this foreign delegation story with every tour group they have??
After we got off the bus, we had about an hour before we had to depart for our evening’s activities, which was dinner and a show of the Tang Dynasty. I had enough time to take a shower and turn on CNN International. That channel has been in every hotel room that I have been in that has had a television, which immediately limits the number.
Then there we were again loading up onto the bus for the Tang Dynasty dinner show. And let me tell you, what a dinner it was. So we all sit down at tables, and the gentleman that I am, I let people sit before me and I can’t exactly see all the stage, and I’m not exactly facing the stage either, but I figure that I’ll be able to make do.
They serve dinner before the show and it was three plates that weren’t exactly dinner. The first dish that came out was so pathetic that I had to take a photo of it.
Five French fries – count ‘em. And that broccoli in the middle of the plate sure wasn’t going to be touched. I’m still uncertain what’s more pathetic: the fact that the dish was five French fries and broccoli or that each of the five French fries had come with the ketchup already applied.
The next dish that came out was some kind of fish or chicken dish. I’m not exactly sure what it was because I never got one. And I told the servers that I never got one, but they didn’t speak English. Although they did seem to notice that I did not have food in front of me. And I never did get that dish because the next one came out. Let’s just say that I didn’t bother to leave a tip.
So dinner or lack thereof ended and the show began. It was not as good as the acrobatic show because I’m not entirely sure what we were seeing. In my opinion, it had nothing to do with the Tang Dynasty. I knew nothing more about the dynasty when I left. That said, the show was a number of vignettes where costumed people danced and moved about.
It was entertaining enough to be considered a night out, but it was nothing spectacular. It was late when the show ended, and as we had a long day we went to bed back at the hotel. And it almost seems appropriate that a day that has had loads of excitement and boredom in many different forms, it ends teetering between the two with the Tang Dynasty show. And all of this and it’s only our fourth day in China. There’s still two more days, and there’s still plenty for China to throw my way.
