The Terracotta Army

I went to the terracotta army today. Didn't want to do a tour, so I walked to the train station - where I saw something very disturbing. Three people were cleaning up after a traffic accident. A scooter had crashed and the rider had cracked his head on the curb. The body was gone, but you could see the blood and the three were scooping up bits of brain and bone with little paper cups. Nobody here in China wears a helmet. Not a very nice way to start the day. Very glad, I didn't see the actual accident...

I took the number 306 bus from the train station to the terracotta army site, about one hour away. Very convenient and cheap - 7 yuan one way. The actual museum is made up of the three pits, where they have found the army, a museum housing two bronze chariots and a circular cinema, where they chow a 360 degree film about the army. The film was actually quite interesting, although a lot of it was reenactment, something I usually hate. But as the film seemed quite old and the fact that it was 360 degrees gave the film the feeling of an art installation, making you have to choose in which direction to look and what to watch. This very post modern effect was quite unintentionally, I am sure.

The whole complex and the way they present the army is a bit dated, but on the whole the site is so vast and interesting that it is still definitely worth coming here.

I am leaving for Lanzhou tomorrow evening with the night train. Lanzhou is the most polluted city in China! But I really want to see the Bingling Thousand Buddhas Caves nearby. The past few days here in Xi'an have been great and very interesting. A completely different China, when compared to Beijing or Shanghai. It is much more the way I imagined China to be like, with lot's of life on the street. Street vendors everywhere. Everything a little dirty. Just not as sanitised as Beijing is at the moment before the Olympics.