Terra Cotta Soldiers - 兵马俑

While in Xi'an, one must venture to the legendary Terra Cotta Soldiers (兵马俑). Discovered in 1974, this incredible archaeological site boasts three massive "pits" filled with ornately sculpted clay warriors. The most impressive fact is that Emperor Qin demanded each warrior be individually sculpted, so that no two were alike. Therefore, they started building this "mausoleum" for him when he was only 13 years of age. I'll spare you the other historical details, since you probably already know a bit about it. If not, read more about it here.

Pit 1, the most impressive collection of all.

Housed in a massive airplane hangar, it takes

nearly 30 minutes just to walk around it. 

The width of Pit 1

Close-up in Pit 1

"Famous" row of horses. If you look close,

the left-most horse is missing his tail. 

While visiting this site, President Clinton "patted" 

the horse's tail, and knocked it clean off.

Pit 2. The remains of another army, but 

this one was ransacked by thieves centuries ago.

One of the better-preserved soldiers.

The world's two largest fully-functional marionettes

.... why not? ....

In addition to the Terra Cotta Soldiers, we visited several other places within Xi'an, essentially a bunch of museums. One of my favorite non-museum places in Xi'an was the China-Muslim Mosque, which combined with the early dawn dew and the misty weather produced a surprisingly peaceful getaway. 

Not the best weather for walking, 

but very zen-like. 

The courtyard of the Mosque

But the fun didn't end with the sights and weather of Xi'an. (oh, I forgot to mention that it rained nonstop for the 70 or so hours we were there.) Story time! At 6:30pm on Saturday night, we arrived at the Xi'an train station for our 7:30 pm train to Beijing. We soon discovered that our train had been delayed for 6 hours, destined to leave at 1:30 am because of severe flooding along the tracks. So, what exactly are 90 students supposed to do for 6 hours? Sit at the train station? To pass the time, I busted out my Xun (a small pot-shaped ocarina), and started playing right in the middle of the train station. Thankfully, CET spent only 15 minutes conceiving a great plan, where we went to another super luxurious hotel and hung out, 5 people to a room, until the train was supposed to leave. 


So by 1 am, we had expected to leave the hotel, but my group still hadn't heard anything from CET. Starting to get a little worried, we went to go find the teachers, who told us the train had been further delayed, and that we could get some sleep. Finally feeling like something was going our way, we brushed our teeth and headed to sleep. BAM. Literally 4 minutes after I laid down, a teacher slams on our door and tells us to haul ass to the train station, because our train is leaving in 30 minutes! 


Five minutes later, we're all bookin' it to the train station, and after we arrive at 2:30 am, we get some more unpleasant news. The departure time is now 3:30 am. Groaning, tired and frustrated, we sat down stood in the train station waiting for another hour. And then at 3:30 am, we hear an announcement in fuzzy Chinese come across the PA system. Guess what? 4:30 am departure. Super. 

At 4:55 am we FINALLY boarded the damn train, and everyone passed out in their beds. Surprisingly, I slept pretty decently, for about 7 hours. At about half-past noon on Sunday, I wake up, sit up, and promptly smack the @#$% out of my head on the train ceiling, bringing me sharply back to reality. I then was informed that we had only traveled 1/5 of the "11-hour" train ride. In 7 hours. 

In the end, we made it back to Beijing 16 hours later than expected, and still had to wake up for 8 am class the next day. I almost always love being here in China, but sometimes, I just want to beat trains with a golf club.