Terracotta Warriors

Xian is home to the world famous terracotta warriors. Some even say that they are the eighth wonder of the world. (I did look this up on Wikipedia, but found nothing mentioning this fact. The website is pretty cool though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army ) So of course, because "everybody's doing it" we go see the soldiers for ourselves.

We decided to go through CITS (the main tourist agency in China) for a tour. Of course, there were surprise stops along the way. For example, we stopped at a factory where they make soldier replicas for tourists. It was kind of interesting to see how the soldiers were made, but at the same time frustrating because we could have been seeing the real thing. Not to mention the fact that even though they said you could buy here and save money it was a lie. 5 kuai outside in the parking lot of the real museum as compared to the 150 kuai at the factory. We did get to make fun pictures in fake soldiers uniforms. :)

When we finally got to the "real" site I was amazed at the size. There were 3 pits that we looked at. Some had more soldiers uncovered than others, but overall just amazing. To think that each soldiers had a different face and characteristics. To think that this was discovered by farmers who were going about their own business... over 8,000 terracotta men! To some degree I thought this trip would be a little boring, but I was wrong. It gave me a lot to think about and a lot to see. Sadly, I did not get to hear the whole history from our tour guide because I was too busy snapping pictures. Maybe one day I will snag a good book about it. I did enjoy seeing the warriors up close though. Pictures can't do it justice.