The different Warriors
After the government factory we headed off to a museum to look at some of the relics from different dynasties. Did you know that the Chinese were the first to invent paper? well according to them. After the museum we went to the Huaqing Hot Springs. Emperor Xuanzong, with Yang Guifei, the Imperial Concubine spent every winter there. Our tour guide the whole bus ride and tour so far had told us about this fat concubine.When we looked around the springs it was revealed that the fat concubine was a normal sized woman with a good figure.

A statue of the so called 'fat' concubine.I think she looks great!
At the hot springs we got to learn more about the Chinese version of the history of Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek. According Amy, our history expert everything they said conflicted with what we had learnt on the history of China. Including somethings that are hard to argue like when Chiang Kai-Shek died. There was this Dutch guy on our tour who asked our guide why Mao ordered for all the trees to be cut down. The guide gave a few typical propaganda answers and then finally said that Mao was an old man at the time and had been given some bad advice from other people. It appears he can never be blamed for anything.
We then went to the warriors. The dutch guy suggested that we saw the smallest room first and then the largest one last, which is the opposite from the "normal way" but makes the larger rooms look more impressive. Our guide agreed so after watching a quality film about the first Emperor of china, which had some really bad acting, we headed to pit 3.
The horse of pit 3
The warriors were amazing. They had been created 2000 years ago and every warrior had a different face because they had been based on really people. It is just mind blowing. They were first discovered when this farm tried to dig a well on his farm. Imagine discovering your farm was on top of an army of 2000 year old terracotta warriors. It is just insane.

After the warriors we went to a museum to see the bronze four drawn horse carts and some art from Taiwan. Finally we climbed this hill which was the tomb of the one of the Emperor but they have not started excavating it yet. So we just walked to the top of the hill and looked around.
That night I was so tried. We got back to the hostel at around 7 and I got my permit for Tibet. I headed off to the station to book my ticket. for Lhasa. The train for 8am for the next day was full so I got a ticket for the day after (3rd June). Amy and Adam were leaving on the 2nd so we had a big breakfast fest together in the morning of the 2nd. We got a watermelon from down the street, so Singapore cereal and some weird Chinese dessert thing that I was given by that Chinese couple in Shanghai whose house I went to. The breakfast was yum and the best part was we ate it in a restaurant which we only order 3 coffees from and bought the food ourselves.Haha! The joys of being a foreigner.
That afternoon we walked through the Muslim markets and around Xian. We meet this Chinese guy who wanted to practise his English with us. We asked him all the normal politically sensitive questions about Taiwan and Tibet. This as normal didn't work very well and we only got a list of propaganda answers. Adam then confused the guy by telling him about books the Chinese government has banned. The guy must of thought we were nuts with this talk about government control over Internet and books. He did admit that China was not really communist anymore but now worship money instead.
After our discussion with our new friend Adam and Amy left for the airport on the bus and I returned to the hostel for my last night in Xian. Back at the hostel I meet this Swiss couple (who were from the French part) who wanted to move to China. They had been travelling around China for 14 months and had learnt a fair bit of Chinese. The rest of the evening was spent teaching me Chinese. i finally got the basics down like how to count and order food.
I was really interested what made them want to move to China. They explained that even though you have more freedom in Switzerland, they do not make enough money to really enjoy the freedom. They would prefer to live in a country with less freedom but with more opportunities to make money and create your own freedom. I found this really interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment