Terracotta Warriors
(Written several days ago...)
It is amazing to me how the brain gets used to change. A few days ago, I was a student of Mandarin, living in SH with my international set of friends. Now, I’m a traveler in Xi’an, staying at a youth hostel with international strangers. And yet, I am perfectly at ease. How is this possible?
The Terracotta warrior day was jam-packed. My roommate, Phil, happened to be going on the tour so we got up around 8am and went down to the café in the hostel for a breakfast included in the price of the tour. I had an American breakfast and could spend an entry describing the contents of this meal alone, but won’t waste your time. At breakfast, we met an interesting fellow named JC from Montreal who has been living in Taiwan for the past 7 years. This guy turned out to be quite a personality. His young cousin, Lauren from Sonoma, was traveling around China with him. During breakfast, as JC waxed on about his illustrious career as a high school science teacher, I played with the hostel’s kitten.
Of course, the tour was hosted by a woman who had never been a tour guide before. And, we were on a HUGE bus. I tried not to be pessimistic but it smacked of Anji and I was nervous about the scams I had heard about – spending the whole day going from one tourist trap to the next and spending only thirty minutes or so with the warriors themselves.
As we drove out of the city, our guide talked about the Emperor whose tomb was guarded by the warriors. Every other word she repeated two or three times and most of us became desperate to arrive SOMEWHERE to end the staggering monologue. And lucky us, we arrived at a terracotta factory. The factory sells all kinds of Chinese knock-off artisan products. Anything you’ve ever seen or thought of as typical ancient Chinese was for sale in this dusty little building off the side of a highway road. We spent an hour at this place and at first no one bought anything. Then, out of boredom, people started wandering back in and the next thing you know, they’d dropped 100 US dollars or Euros. Right about then, it was suddenly time to go.
Everything we passed on the way to the warriors was painted pink. And I mean everything. Houses, cars, other vehicles, water tanks, store fronts, signs, TREES, walls, sidewalks. I can only imagine that some factory produced 4 thousand gallons of pink paint when the order called for puce paint. Phil’s explanation was that instead of a yellow-brick road to Oz, we were following the pink-brick wall to the warriors. There was a lot of pink.
Next stop was a museum and the guide didn’t tell us what was in the museum, she only said, “once you get out, meet me at the other end”. She made sure to have us come out on the side where vendors were selling miniature warriors and carpets and 15 kuai cokes. By this time, I’d seen so much warrior paraphernalia that I wasn’t that much excited about seeing the real things anymore. Then, the guide told us we had to go to lunch. There was mutiny on the bus. People started yelling and complaining to the guide that they weren’t hungry and that they wanted to just go to the warriors already! The guide argued that someone on board was hungry. When no one raised their hands she pointed to a group of three helpless Chinese in the back of the bus who spoke little or no English. She said, “They are hungry, so we have to stop!” Someone threatened to get off the bus and take a taxi the rest of the way and demand a refund so the guide relented and took us to the warriors after dropping the three Chinese off at a restaurant where they had to pay for a very expensive lunch. It turns out, they only had thirty minutes to view the warriors, where we ended up getting three hours.
I’m speeding through the details, so I might as well just give my impression. I think the discovery is incredible. I think the Chinese have done an amazing job at preserving the find and making it as accessible to the public as possible. That said, it wasn’t at all what I expected. That doesn’t mean I was disappointed, it just was very different from how it is portrayed in the West. Many of the warriors have been destroyed (previous to the find, of course) or removed from the site for study, touring in other countries, etc. The main pit was the only one that had an almost intact display of warriors. The other two pits on display are mostly empty and showcase the amount of space occupied by the terracotta army. I really do think it is amazing and am glad I went, but it was a circus and I was somewhat frustrated with all of the conning that has sprung up around the simple desire to see this magnificent archaeological find. I was warned that the Great Wall is a similar experience unless you get well out of Beijing to see it. Duly noted.
