This is a continuation of my RTW diary from November 2003.I went from Beijing to Xi’an for the day to see the Terracotta Army. Unfortunately it involved an early start – up at 5: 30 for a 6:15 taxi to the airport… now you can see why I needed clear heads rather than celbrating too well and not too wisely after England's RWC win.
On arrival I had a quick tour around the old walls of the city and the Goose Pagoda (pictured).
The early morning start was well worth the effort. I said before that China does things on a different scale. Tian’anmen Square, the Congress, the 5,000 mile long wall… and now the Terracotta Army.
The 2300 year old army guards the entrance to the tomb of the first Emperor of China, who was also the same guy who started work on the Great Wall. The guy clearly had the worst case of Edifice Complex since Pharaoh Ramses II. I had seen some of the warriors when the Chinese government sent a few around the world on a tour in the 1980s, so I sort of knew what to expect from the individual statues.
What I had not been prepared for was the scale of the Army en masse. They have found fragments of 8000 soldiers to date and the first of the three excavation pits is 230 metres long and 62 metres wide. Only a few hundred soldiers and horses have been reconstructed and they are presented at the front of the hall. Even looking at 200 metres of soldier rubble was awesome. All of the excavation pits are covered, so the architecture of the museum was impressive too… a 13,800 sq metre space covered with a single curved roof. It was oddly reminiscent of Earls Court tube station, but immeasurably more interesting than waiting for the District Line!
I must admit that half way around the exhibition, the thought did cross my mind that it is all a huge confidence trick on the part of the Chinese government and that the warriors are actually being manufactured down the road. Is it simply an imaginative way to lure tourists to an otherwise out of the way part of China, while providing employment for local potters?
Maybe I got the idea because just before we went to the Terracotta Army Museum, I was taken to the factory where they do make full sized replica soldiers. These are made for visiting Heads of State, who are given a full size copy as a gift from the Chinese people, and are sold to anyone else willing to pay £1000. Genuine soldiers are never given as gifts as they are so rare, and also (we were told), because they belong to the Chinese people, so asking permission from 1.3 billion citizens obviously would take time!
Apparently Bill Clinton was so pissed off that he wasn’t going to be given a real soldier, that the President Li Pen gave in… and told him that his replica was actually genuine! Talk about keeping everyone happy.
As I was leaving, I also got to meet the farmer who dug up the first piece of the Terracotta Army back in 1974. He was a quiet, old little man, sitting in the bookshop by the exit still in his Mao-era denim suit and wearing a pair of huge bright red Deirdre Barlow style glasses. He looked too honest to be at the centre of a big con trick, so I trust again that it’s all genuine.
There was a sign next to him saying ‘no photos’ and I wonder what he thought of all this excitement generated by his well digging 29 years ago. I wondered too whether his farm collective had been attached to the water mains or is the man still well-less and in need of a fresh water supply? Was he sat there waiting for the excavation of the army to finish so he could get back to work on his well? My Mandarin wasn’t up to asking him I’m afraid, but he didn’t look thirsty.
It was amazing too to see where the well he sank was in relation to the whole site. It was in the far North West corner of the army formation, and if it had been dug literally one foot further North or West, the Terracotta Army would probably still be undiscovered.
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