Wednesday 12th November 2014
Terracotta Army – The Small Wild Goose Pagoda
The Muslim Quarter
We had a lie in this morning until 7am!! Jessica met us promptly at 8.30am and we drove 35 km east of the city of Xi’an to the site of the Terracotta Army. As well as being one of China’s four ancient capitals this city is also the eastern starting point of the silk route.
The Chinese farmer who discovered the first statues in one of his fields in 1974 was sat in the site’s souvenir shop offering to sign books for a small fee. A notice placed in front of him advised that photographing the farmer was prohibited, no doubt this could have been arranged for another ‘small fee’ but the four of us were far more interested in photographing the Terracotta Army.
There are three huge pits where the army stands.
We stood in awe, staring at the hundreds of figures and their individual detail. It is difficult to comprehend that every one of them is unique. Every life size sculpture has a different facial expression. Jessica explained that when the figures are first uncovered they have some colour but within a very short period of time the colour disintegrates leaving only the terracotta colour. Because of this they are now leaving the remaining statues in the pits and are not excavating them until they have perfected a solution to retain their colour.
In one area of the pit, archaeologists are working, painstakingly reconstructing the army that comprises soldiers, officers, horses and archers.
In another pit, terracotta horses and soldiers lie partially excavated. In the museum there is a chariot that has been completely restored. Life size replicas of the soldiers are available for purchase in the souvenir shop and can be shipped anywhere in the world. Somehow I cannot imagine one standing in our lounge. The huge complex also has a room with replicas where you can stand next to a warrior and be photographed. We had a buffet lunch in the complex before heading back to the city.
During the journey Jessica pointed out a Chinese letter to us and explained that it was the Chinese character for ‘ bi ang’, which, translates as ‘noodles’. 56 strokes of the pen are needed to write this character. I tried writing a character but I got no further than 30 strokes before it looked like complete scribble and the lines became indistinguishable. Our guide also told us about the shape of ancient Chinese coins, that the outer round circle represents heaven and the centre square symbolises earth. This is the same too for chopsticks and for the shape of the Temple of Heaven building.
Joyce telephoned us to confirm that we do have rooms on the 3rd floor at the Longii One hotel in Ping An. She verified the rest of our schedule until we leave for Tibet, apologised again for reserving the wrong hotel and told us to ring her if there is any problem.
Back in Xi’an we visited the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. It is not as small as its name suggests with thirteen stories, apparently there were originally fifteen but the top two were destroyed in an earthquake.
Our final stop of the day was Xi’an’s Muslim Quarter. There was a party atmosphere in the district, it was absolutely buzzing. Many people were wandering around. Countless stalls were selling take away foods, smells from one mingled with the next. Lots of spicy food was on offer. Lamb, beef, potatoes, and a variety of breads, candy, nuts, quail’s eggs and many other foods were also available.
Once more I was approached for a photograph – perhaps it is because of my red hair, apparently it is considered auspicious. The streets were colourful and illuminated with neon lights. We saw a shop selling candy, and watched two men making it. The candy was looped around a large hook and pulled and stretched, and then it was removed from the hook and hammered with a wooden mallet.
We meandered through the alleyways, which reminded us of the souks in Tunisia. They were full of stalls selling copies of famous brands of clothes and luggage. Many souvenirs were on sale. Wooden, plastic or porcelain chopsticks could be purchased; there were hundreds of different designs. Numerous stallholders were offering jewellery, silk shawls and handbags. Just before 5pm, Jessica asked us if we were ready to return to our hotel. However the four of us decided to stay in the lively Muslim Quarter. Dave and I had decided to buy a new suitcase as one of ours had been damaged during transit. We arranged to meet Anne and Pete in the morning and retraced our steps to the stalls that were selling luggage.
Our guidebooks had advised that we must haggle for anything purchased in a market place. It is many years since we bartered in the souk in Sousse, Tunisia so we were definitely out of practise. However, we quite agreed with the author of the book and his opinion about bartering. He commented that there are two ways to do it; one is to point out and perhaps exaggerate any flaws that the product has and therefore haggle the price down. Or the much nicer way is to mention how nice and how much you like the product but mention that it is just more money than you wish to pay. So of course we followed the second route and after choosing a case we managed to bargain the lady down to 220 Yuan from her initial price of 350 Yuan. There were smiles all round while doing the deal. We also purchased a bum bag, a small rucksack and two bracelets, one each for Jasmine and Kayleigh – two of our granddaughters.
We started to walk back to our hotel. We passed and admired both the impressively illuminated drum tower and bell tower. It seemed a long walk back after a long fabulous day. We popped into a restaurant and asked to see a menu but of course it was written only in Chinese, we asked the waitress if a menu was available in English but she just pointed at an item on the menu, it could have been anything so we decided to continue walking towards our hotel.
We saw a tall building in the distance and hoped that it was the hotel but unfortunately it wasn’t, we had decided that the next tall building wasn’t either when Dave spotted the Russian Bar next door, which meant that it was our hotel. I was pleased that we were finally back. There wasn’t a name on the exterior of the building, which seems strange. If of course we had been in the Grand Noble hotel that we had booked, we would have been much closer to the Muslim Quarter.
It was 7.15pm so we dropped our new suitcase and the rest of our shopping in our room and immediately went to the hotel’s restaurant. Once again there were many unusual dishes (to us westerners) on the menu, one of these dishes was donkey meat. However we chose sweet and sour pork (again), noodles and seasonal vegetables.
After our meal we returned to our room and repacked, using our newly bartered for suitcase.
It wasn’t until the middle of the night that I remembered about the mosque in the Muslim Quarter, we had intended to visit it, but unfortunately it had completely slipped our mind. I hoped that Anne and Pete had remembered…
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