We arrived in Xi’an yesterday morning by overnight train. A little less scary than the night train to Varanasi, this one had limited access to the car and someone official looking roving about.
Our room was once again inside the old city wall. Quite a large area, this section of town has been occupied for 2800 years. Many of the buildings are 1ooo years old. They lasted longer than in some of the places we have visited previously because they were made of brick instead of wood. In the center of the walled city is a bell tower and a drum tower (pictured above.)
We visited a 1000-year-old Dao temple and a 1000 year-old mosque. Being the eastern end of the Silk Road, Xi’an collected a large population of Muslims. The Muslim area of the old city seems very like the souks of the middle east. Although Xi’an is only considered to be a small city because its population is less than 10,000,000, (only 8,700,000) it seems to go on forever. Traffic is every bit as bad as LA on a bad day. It took an hour to get from the train station to the hotel, an hour to get to the Terra-cotta Warrior Museum, and hour to get to the train station.
This morning we visited the Terra-cotta Warrior Museum. There are three large dig areas. Pit One is the size of a couple football fields. They have yet to unearth 3/4 of the artifacts. Many were destroyed shortly after the emperor died and was buried. The first statues found still had colorful paint when discovered but the colors disappeared after just a few days. They are waiting to figure out how to preserved the colors before digging more out. They still have a lot of work to do restoring many, many pieces that were broken.
