Leaving on a Jet Plane

Sorry it’s been so long…I’ll get to that reason in the next post. But first I gotta catch you up on my date with some 7,000 old dudes…I don’t think there will be a second date—it was kind of like talking to a rock. Yes, they were the terracotta warriors, and yes it was pretty amazing.

The plane to Xi’an arrived at 8:00pm. After an hour-long search using maps and my sub-par Chinese to navigate the streets, I finally found the hostel I was looking for—a quaint little place complete with a friendly staff, free internet, clean rooms, a little café, a pool room, and a bar, which served free beer from 7-9pm and 11-1am. I could have set up camp here for a long time (the bar at least), had it not been for my time constraints and the hordes of tourists (which was nothing compared to the terracotta warriors site, which made me feel like I was in the rural Midwest).

By the time I got settled down and then unwound for bed, it was 11:30pm. This didn’t work too well, as I got up at 5:30am the next morning to run around the ancient city of Xi’an before rendezvousing with my ancient friends. And it ended up being exacerbated by a group of Americans who decided to stay up all night and talk in the reading lounge outside my door (see the 2nd pic...I was on the 2nd floor for reference). I didn’t sleep much. Whatever. I had to make the most of my time in the city—my flight was leaving at 8pm that night.

Everything was perfect: the terracotta warriors didn’t open until 8:30am, and I was already headed toward the long-distance buses (the warriors are about an hour outside the city) at around 7:15. I knew the city bus number—603—and I got on one immediately. It wasn’t until about 30 minutes later that I found out my bus was going in the wrong direction. On the bright side, I did get to see a lot of the city. But to make a long story short, I didn’t get to the warriors until about 10:30. Sometimes, you should just take a cab (and sometimes you shouldn’t be stupid and get on the bus on the wrong side of the street).

So there I am, walking up to the gates. I’d read in my guide book that the tour guides can really enhance the tour, since they know all the history. Serious mistake. I paid too much for a guide who’s English was sketchy at best and who put way too much emphasis on Bill Clinton’s visit in 1994. She wasn’t there when it happened, but damn straight she knew everything about it, and she wanted me to know too. She tended to rush me through the exhibits, didn’t give me very much info, and was a terrible picture taker (most of the photos you see were shot by me).

Regardless, I made the best of it and forced her to stop and wait for me. It was pretty mind-boggling, to think that some 700,000 workers produced (and were buried alive to preserve its secrets) over 7,000 statues that took up to 10 years each to finish. The detail was incredible: treads on the bottom of shoes, chain-link of their armor, and the fact that no two faces are alike. Qin Shihuang, the ruler who needed all these warriors to protect him in the afterlife, sure went out in style. I want that kind of funeral: not only do your friends and co-workers attend your funeral, but they set it up for you and then bury themselves alive with you. You’ve got to really be a likable guy (…or a tyrant). He was pretty accomplished: he unified China, created a national railroad, established a standard of metrics, and even created the common written language of Chinese, which has the huge advantage of overcoming the colloquial speech obstacles. People in Shanghai and Beijing can’t communicate through speech much, if at all, but they can both read the same text created by this workaholic Mr. Qin back in the “good old days”, when people still buried themselves alive alongside arguably the greatest archeological find of the 20^th century to honor your death (actually, they were buried about a mile away near Qin’s burial site—the warriors were just for protection).

I only spent about three hours at the site—you really don’t need to spend much more time to see it all and get the pictures. The rest of the day sucked the life out of me. It down-poured: the streets were flowing like rivers (terrible Chinese engineering…no drainage) as I walked around without an umbrella. I was trying to get on this bus to see this big pagoda. Again, I failed pathetically at public transportation. I never got there, and finally gave up, resigning myself to a smoothie shop until my flight. I sucked down a decent peach-mango smoothie along with some other Americans also looking for refuge from the Noah’s Ark-like storm.

In the end, it was worth it, as the warriors are probably one of the most incredible things I’ve seen, but there’s definitely a few things I’d do differently. Diane and David can rest easy—the goal has been accomplished.