Monday, October 24 – Xi’an

Because we’d missed most of one day with the flight delay, some itinerary items had to be jettisoned. Visits to the ancient city walls, and to the Shanxi History Museum would be sacrificed. The Shanxi is a big modern museum with a huge and important collection – murals, paintings, pottery, coins, gold and silver, etc. It’s important enough to warrant its own Wikipedia article. But our visit to it was cancelled so we would be sure not to miss the pottery and furniture “factory,” where they hoped to sell us reproductions of terracotta warriors.

In fairness, the factory was inter esting, and did appear to be a real factory. It’s where we headed first, after an early start – we were on the bus by 8 a.m. On our way to the factory, Big Leo told a disappoint-ing fib. He said if we did want to buy souvenir terracotta warriors, we should buy them at the factory because the prices at other places, such as the gift shop at the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, were as much as five times higher. I was a little skeptical of this, so checked. It’s not true. The figurines at the museum shop were more expensive, but nothing like five times more. It was disappointing because Big Leo seemed a decent guy, intelligent with a nice dry sense of humour. Do the individual local guides, I wonder, earn commissions on merchandise sold at these places? Or, to call a spade a spade, do they take kick-backs? Don’t know, no longer care.

Finish work on reproduction terracotta warriors

Some tour groups at the factory were getting a much better explanation and demonstration of the manufacturing process than we were, which was frustrating. Our factory guide spoke briefly in the workshop when we first came in, then hustled us through to the sales rooms. Karen and I suffered politely through the sales spiel, then wandered back out to the workshop. It appears the figures are formed in styrofoam molds, then hand finished with knives and other small carving tools. 

Life-size reproduction terracotta warrior

Molds for table-size terracotta warrior reproductions

Finish work on reproduction warriors

They were quite convincing replicas, I thought. I was tempted to buy some. They came in several sizes, up to life size. The factory would ship the life-size ones to Canada for free if you wanted one for your garden or foyer. Lots of people in our group bought smaller ones.

The furniture factory: painting a lacquer ware screen

The next stop was the real thing, the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum. And now, finally, I can write about something I saw in China that genuinely excited me. I was pretty sure this would be the highlight of the trip, and I wasn’t disappointed.

First glimpse of the terracotta army in Pit 1

It’s an astonishing story. In 1974, farmers digging a well came upon some unusual pottery fragments. Perhaps only farmers in such an ancient land, with such an incredibly long and rich history would recognize what they’d found as important, or care about it. They ran and fetched the village teacher who came and looked. He guessed rightly that it was a very important find, and contacted the appropriate government officials. Soon, an archaeological team showed up and began digging. The rest is history.

A closer view

According to the most recently published estimates, 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses were buried at the site, along with thousands of bronze and wooden weapons. Most of the terracotta is still buried or in fragments. The wooden bows and arrows have long since turned to dust. Archaeologists believe many of the bronze swords and other weapons were pillaged by peasant rebels not long after they were buried, but some did survive. Fewer than 2,000 warriors are on display in situ in the museum’s three “pits” today. A couple of the chariots are on view in glass cases in a museum building.

Bronze chariot

The terracotta army was created on orders of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang, in about 206 BCE. They were supposed to protect his tomb. The location of the nearby tomb was long known. The terracotta army had been lost for two millennia. Chinese kings once buried real soldiers alive when they died, but the new emperor realized if he wanted his empire to survive, he would have to leave the living soldiers to defend it. So he substituted a very realistic army made of terracotta – fired but unglazed clay, literally ‘cooked earth’ in Italian. High iron content in the clay gives it the characteristic red-brown colour.

Spear chucker, minus the spear

The most amazing thing about this army is that while the warriors were mass produced from molds, and appear in a limited number of postures – foot soldiers standing to attention, officers with arms crossed, kneeling archers, sitting charioteers, etc. – the bronze-age artists carved each head with different features. They are believed to be portraits of real soldiers who lived over 2,000 years ago. And when you see them up close, they are astonishingly real and life-like – brilliant works of art, in fact. They would have looked even more life-like when first erected because they were painted. When the archaeologists started excavating, they found some figures that still had colour. But within 30 seconds of being exposed to air, the ancient pigments oxidized and vanished, leaving the red-brown figures we see today. Part of the reason that relatively few of the warriors have been excavated so far is that the Chinese hope new technology will eventually be developed to somehow preserve the colour.

Close-up view showing how life-like the warriors are

Note how each warrior has a distinct face - well, those who have faces

We arrived at the museum in the rain. (So, the answer to an earlier question is, no, it never would stop.) We started our tour at Pit 1, where the majority of the warriors, about 6,000, are buried. After they were placed in neat ranks 2,000 years ago, protective awnings were built over them and earthworks packed around. They are housed today in a huge hangar, hundreds of feet long – like an overgrown Quonset hut. The first glimpse you get is exactly what you’ve seen in pictures: the ranks of dusty soldiers in trenches 20 or 30 feet below ground, receding impressively into the distance. It’s a remarkable sight.

Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, Pit 1

As you look more closely, you realize the bodies of many of the soldiers are a lattice of cracks. Few in fact were recovered intact. Some may have been vandalized when the site was pillaged. And the slow build-up of earth over the centuries eventually collapsed the awnings, crushing the warriors below. The ones on display, in many cases, had to be painstakingly reconstructed from fragments. Towards the back of Pit 1, we came upon a restoration workshop where warriors in the process of being rebuilt are on display – a sick bay for the terracotta army. (There was another in Pit 3, according to Karen’s notes.) Some, wrapped in what looked like packing tape to keep their bits together while under repair, looked like mummies standing there.

Field hospital - some walking wounded

After surgery

In some trenches in Pit 1 and in the smaller Pits 2 and 3, much of the excavation has been left in a more preliminary stage. You can see broken soldiers lying about drunkenly in the trenches, or sometimes just a midden of fragments – heads, arms, legs, torsos, often still half-buried. It’s an effective way to show the way the site was when first discovered. 

Carnage

Some of the best and most intact of the warriors, on the other hand, are displayed in glass cases in Pit 3, brilliantly lit. It’s here that you can see them close enough to realize just how life-like they are. The cases also house examples of surviving bronze weapons.

2,000-year-old Qin Dynasty soldiers

Back at the pottery factory, the guide had warned us that we would see hawkers selling box sets of reproduction warriors. We should avoid them because they were inferior product – by which I suspect she meant, not manufactured here. We did see them. They selling a set in a little wooden box. They looked at a glance from a distance, little different from the ones at the factory. The sellers were walking up and down the three-deep crowd of tourists lining the fences around the pits, offering their wares. They would wave an open box in your face. I saw a couple in our group buy one. I think they were only 50 CSY (about $12). I heard him telling someone afterwards that the quality looked fine.

Between the visits to Pits 2 and 3 (or maybe it was 1 and 2), we took a break for lunch at a noodle restaurant on the site. Noodles are a big thing in this part of China and in Xi’an in particular. Big Leo explained that people who come from where Little Leo lives in the southeast rarely eat noodles, only rice. This is because the pasta there isn’t very good. In Xi’an, he said, it was the best. Little Leo enthusiastically nodded agreement. And it may be the best. The restaurant had two stations where they were making fresh noodles of different kinds – one wheat, the other rice – and serving them in bowls with sauces. Both were delicious. The chef at the wheat pasta station was a real showman, flinging the dough around like a cross between a pizza cook and a juggler. The rest of the meal was a cut above other places we’d eaten too. In fact, this was probably the best meal we’d had so far.

The last stop at the museum site was a building with displays of the two most intact – or best restored – of the bronze chariots that have been uncovered. They’re in glass cases, in rooms with very low ambient light, presumably to minimize further degradation of the metal. The chariots are as impressive as the terracotta soldiers, or more. I took a picture of one of the plaques (which I should have done more often.) Here’s what it had to say (in the usual rough English translation):

“The two sets of bronz chariots and horses were made in the size of 1/2 of the practically used chariots and horses and they were the symbol of Qin Shihuang’s chariot-horse guard of honor. All the major parts and units of them are made of tin-bronze alloy with 14 kg of units made of gold and silver, making up a total weight 2302 kg. The making of the chariots and horses is precise, vivid and complicated, the decoration grand and the relation among the reins for different purposes clear. The craftsmanship is fine and delicate, making them the dear objects for the research on the ancient Chinese chariot system and manufacture.”

“Dear objects.” I like that.

Bronze chariot

We drove in the bus from the terracotta warriors to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, a Buddhist temple complex near the city centre. Our route took us along part of the well-preserved city wall, which we had no time to stop and look at, for the annoying reasons already mentioned. We did not actually see inside the pagoda either. There was not time for that as we had to go into a calligraphy/painting studio instead for a calligraphy demonstration – oh, and an opportunity to buy paintings and crafts.

Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, with incense burner

We did see the outside of the pagoda. It was originally built in 704 to house holy scriptures brought to China from India, and the monks who worked on translating them into Chinese. It’s impressive only because it’s so old and still intact. The traditional pagoda architecture, I find boring. We saw two other small temples in the grounds, with the by now familiar over-size golden statues, incense burners, gongs and shaven-headed monks. We also saw some interesting stellae, standing in the gardens, inscribed with the names of scholars who had worked here over the centuries.

Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, tourists in front of temple

Buddha and scholars

Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, carved wood temple door

The Wild Goose guide was a jumpy middle-aged guy who spoke quickly and had the odd mannerism of punctuating his speech by compulsively swiping at his lips and the end of his nose with a cocked thumb. It was as if he was checking off items on a list as he spoke. It was distracting, but amusing. It was he who gave the calligraphy demonstration, and some explanation of how modern characters evolved from early pictograms. I’ve seen people do this style of calligraphy before, in Japan. We also had a friend in Toronto who taught in China in the 1980s. He’d learned some calligraphy there and demonstrated for us. The odd thing is the way they use a brush, not a pen, and never rest the heel of their hand on the paper – the hand hovers a few inches above the page. It must take a lot of practice, and strength, to be able to control the brush.

Temple guide demonstrating Chinese calligraphy

Some of the water colour paintings on display, the ones by professional artists – including some famous across China – were quite attractive. But most of what was for sale were smaller pieces by monks and students and other members of the community. They looked amateurish to my eye. I don’t think the temple sold many – or any – to our group. It was the last day of the tour, so perhaps our shoppers were tapped out by now. Some did pay the guide-demonstrator about $10 to draw a character representing their name. They did the same thing for us in Japan when I was there. I’d never been able to figure out what the character might mean in Chinese (or Japanese). This fellow said it’s a character or characters that express a quality or qualities that the person’s name suggests they might possess. Yes, but how do English names suggest personality traits to a Chinese person? Never mind, it doesn’t matter.

Greeter at Dumpling dinner theatre in Tang Dynasty costume

Our last activity of the trip – that evening, after a brief pit stop back at the hotel – was the Imperial Dumpling Banquet Dinner, and a dinner show, a “traditional” Tang Dynasty Singing and Dancing Show. The food was fabulous, a parade of different shaped and filled dumplings of the kind we love so much at Dim Sum. According to Karen’s notes, the restaurant makes 16 different kinds, of which we sampled at least eight. The dumplings filled with ground, spiced duck were shaped like ducks. The ones filled with bok choi had green shells and were shaped a bit like bok choi clusters. Some looked and tasted exactly like ones we get at the Pearl in Toronto. There was also dessert, including quite tasty pastries with walnut paste inside, and a revolting sweet wine that no one drank. Even here, we were subjected to a sales pitch. After dinner, before the show started, they brought packages of tea and cloisonné Christmas bells to shill. I don’t know if anyone bought.

Dumpling dinner theatre

I had had high hopes for the show. I thought since it was supposed to represent the culture of the Tang Dynasty – 618-907 AD – the music would surely be played on traditional acoustic Chinese instruments. But with a couple of exceptions, the numbers were the same silly, anachronistic tableaux and dances with insipid recorded music that we had experienced at other shows in China. One exception was a singer who came out with an ancient stringed instrument. She did appear to be playing it, although there was also recorded accompaniment. The song and her singing were lovely. But were they authentic Tang style? I doubt it. The other exception was a man playing pan pipes to imitate the sounds of birds. As Karen says in her journal, “Very strange.”

Back at the hotel, we discovered that one of the bath towels had not been replaced in the day’s cleaning, leaving us with only one. Karen was afraid we would be charged for the missing one, and I that we might need both in the morning. So I called housekeeping and asked them to bring another, and some extra toilet paper while they were at it. They misunderstood, and thought we wanted them to replace a dirty towel with a clean one. When the young woman came to the door and I finally made her understand, she asked if she could come in and look, to confirm my story! I couldn’t believe it – well, actually I could very easily because it was of a piece with trying to trick guests into paying for water when free bottles were supplied.