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The main event of
the day today was visiting the museum of the Terracotta Warriors, known
as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Our second day in
Xi’an began with a 7:00am wake-up call. Our first stop after breakfast
was a visit to the Terracotta Factory. We were taken through the factory
and learned about how each soldier was made from a clay mold and then
specific details were added to make each statue unique. Then, the
statues are fired in a giant kiln. The life-size statues in the factory
had to be fired for months at a time. It seemed like thousands of
statues of all sizes were for sale and on display. The most exciting
part of our visit to the factory was when we were visiting the factory
gift shop, where hundreds of Terracotta warrior and horse figurines were
for sale. Someone had the idea to purchase a large statue to bring back
to display on the Cary Academy campus. The idea seemed wild at first,
but Ms. Lee thought we should give it a shot. We picked out a
3-foot-high black horse, after realizing that the life-size horse on
display would probably be a little out of our price range. Most of us
thought this was all a joke, until Mr. Rokuskie called up Mr. Berger.
His answer was that if we could bargain with the store manager to pull
the price under $1000, we could get it. All of us have had some good
experience bargaining on the street on this trip, but we elected Ms. Lee
as our “Bargaining Queen.” We watched from a distance as she argued with
the manager in very fast Chinese.
The question is: did
we get the price down to Mr. Berger’s standards so we could bring the
horse home? ……
Our next stop after
the factory was to none other than the Terracotta Army Museum. We parked
our bus and had to take a 15-minute walk to the museum. First, we were
led into a large room that had video screens on all sides. It was a
little crowded, but the effect of the room was pretty cool. The video
pretty much consisted of a reenactment of the life of Emperor Shi Huang
Di, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty. Known for uniting China under
his dictatorial rule, Emperor Shi Huang Di is best known for his three
unifications: the unification of the written language, the unification
of weights and measures, and the unification of coins and exchange. A
strict ruler, he forced slave labor on many of his people and ordered
the connection and extension of the Great Wall, along with the creation
of his vast tomb, including his army of Terracotta warriors.
The Terracotta Army
was discovered in 1974 by farmers in a small village in the Shaanxi
Province when they were digging to build a well. Three pits of soldiers
were soon uncovered, all of them strategically built by slaves and
commoners under Emperor Shi Huang Di to protect him in his afterlife.
There are 8000 warrior statues in all, although many of them have been
destroyed in wars over the years since the Qin Dynasty. Each statue has
a unique facial expression. One of the things we learned at the
Terracotta factory was how the different hair styles of each soldier
showed the soldier’s ranking in the army. Soldiers of different rank
also had different clothing styles.
Ms. Lee has always
told us how even after visiting the Terracotta soldiers many times, she
still gets goose bumps when she walks into the room. It really was
pretty amazing. The first pit had the most preserved statues on display,
so we were sure to take a lot of pictures. The room containing the
second and third pits had some really interesting and especially-well
preserved soldiers in glass cases. One soldier statue in a glass case
held the position of a “kneeling archer” in the army. Something that
fascinated me was how detailed the pattern was on the sole of his shoe.
It reiterated the great lengths at which the builders and sculptors went
in building the tomb and clay army for their prosperous Emperor.
After lunch, we
traveled to the Stone Tablet Museum. A number of ancient stone tablets
were on display from the Tang Dynasty. We spent a good amount of time
watching a man copying the print from a tablet onto rice paper by
spreading the paper over the vertical tablet and patting blank ink on it
so the design would come through onto the paper. Similar, finished rice
papers with prints identical to real tablets were hanging for sale at
the museum. Next, we visited the first Islam Mosque in China. The
buildings of the temple were designed beautifully. The prayer room was
off limits to tourists, though. We were pretty tired at this point in
the day. We did get excited when we met a group of American college
students, a few of them who attended N.C. State. We get pretty excited
on this trip when we hear people speak English in general.
Dinner was special
tonight. It was the dumpling feast! We had been looking forward to this
for a few days. The setting of the restaurant was a number of dinner
tables in a sort of stadium seating fashion, with a large stage at the
front of the room. We were served twenty-two rounds of dumplings,
ranging from a “pickled dumpling” to sweet walnut dumplings for desert.
The dumplings filled with pork were in the shape of little pigs, and the
duck dumplings (which were quite good) had little bills. After the last
dumplings were served, we moved our chairs around to face the stage for
a performance featuring traditional Chinese music and dancing of the
Tang Dynasty. It was a good ending to a busy day; most of us were
exhausted.
Shout out for today:
Goes to my mom and dad and anyone else that I know that is reading this.
I miss you! |
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