A Date with 1000 Terracotta Warriors: Day One
星期一, 四月 03, 2006
The Terracotta Warriors
Trip to Xi'an: March 23 - March 25. Day One.
Note: visual version of the trip documented here
After class (ok I'm lying, I skipped class that morning), packing, and a quick trip to the grocery store for some train munchie-munchies, Chris, Craig and myself were off to Beijing West Railroad station to catch the 6:30pm "Iron Rooster" to Xi'an.
We arrived at 7:30 the next morning. Because the hostel we stayed at was nice enough to send someone to the station pick us up, we had a free 15 minute ride to the city center. One of the first things you see outside train station are the original walls which enclose the city center - modern Xi'an actually extends far beyond the walls. First impressions of Xi'an gleaned from peering out the car window: much smaller than Beijing, more trees, narrower streets, more electric bicycles. Pretty nice.
After dropping our luggage off and freshening up, it was time to go on our first adventure - the terracotta warriors! Instead of forking over a couple hundred kuai for a prepackaged tour, we decided to go it alone using public transportation. We knew the number 306 bus will take us to the warriors for 8 kuai (thank you Lonely Planet) and we knew the bus station is next to the train station. Plus we know chinese, so no problem right?
Wrong. We find the bus station just fine and start looking for buses numbered 306. Here's where the story gets interesting: there are two types of buses labelled 306 - minibuses and big green buses. One lady asks if we're looking for bus 306, after saying yes, we are promptly shuttled into a little minibus with about 10 other chinese tourists. We pay 8 kuai for the tickets and start congratulating ourselves for finding the right bus... until the lady forks over a tissue-thin piece of paper that introduces our 'itinerary' for the afternoon: some tombs, hot springs, blahblah, and the terracotta warriors dead last.
"Um, we're not really interested in seeing these other things. Isn't there a bus that goes straight to the Army?" we ask tentatively. To which the response was "No! There are no direct buses!"
Okay fine, we settle into the tiny seats for the ride, and figure we'll just skip the sights we don't want to see. As the minibus pulls out of the parking lot, the driver deftly removes the "306" sign out of the window and the lady starts thanking us for taking a tour with their company! At this point, we see one of the big green buses drive by... which still has the number 306 in its window. Turns out that is the legit bus to the Terracotta Army - we were scammed into taking a tour instead!
This wasn't too big a deal since we weren't paying more than the big bus and we were heading towards the Army anyway. But when we arrived at the first stop and were told a) we couldn't skip anything and b) we had to pay all admissions to the tour guide up front, we thought "screw this", made up some excuse to the guide about Craig feeling sick and needing skip out on the tour, before hopping in a cab to travel 5 more minutes to the terracotta warriors instead.
A flash of our student ID and 3 half-priced tickets later, we were in the grounds of Emperor Qin's Army of Terracotta Warriors! The grounds contain a museum and three 'vaults' that the excavation pits. Due to our penchant for wandering off prescribed paths, we ended up starting at Vault 3 and working backwards instead of the other way around. Good thing too because with Vault 3 being the least excavated and Vault 1 the most, we realized it would have been awfully disappointing to see Vaults 2 and 3 after Vault 1!
All three pits are cavernous spaces cut into the earth, scattered with terracotta fragments, and dotted with excavated and semi-excavated (and some decapitated) statues of horses and soldiers. But its Pit 1 that's truly memorable - it's contains the famous view of rows and rows and rows of soldiers. Craig points out that they don't seem so impressive in our age of mass-production; it was bizarre to remind ourselves that every figure was handmade.
Proof that we were actually there...
We decided to head to our next stop: The Tomb of Emperor Qin. After leaving the grounds and fending off a group of intense souvenir hawkers - these guys are worse than in Beijing! - we found the (legit) bus and rumbled off to see Emperor Qin's tomb. It was kind of disappointing since it's little more than a hill with a nice view at the top but it was a nice break before we returned to the bus and rumbled back to the city.
We wandered around the city for the rest of the evening; the Muslim quarter (which we referred to as "Hui-ville" due to the Hui ethnic minority that lives in the area)was particularly festive, filled with the sight of little shops and smell and sizzle of roasting kebabs. We took pictures of the Drum and Bell Towers (our destinations for tomorrow) before walking along the bustling shopping road of the city.
A restaurant in the Muslim quarter
The Drum Tower by night
We saw something disturbing along this road: a body, that looked like a beggar, sprawled face-down in the middle of the sidewalk. He didn't move. The thought "is he alive?" seriously crossed my mind - the blood smeared on his face and the sidewalk didn't help. A slight crowd was staring but no one was doing anything to help. Back home, I would have called the police or an ambulance without hesitation. But here... we didn't know what number to call, what street we were on, what to say, or even if calling the police was the right thing to do. I was on the brink of asking a passer-by to call someone when the body suddenly woke up and slowly sat up. We began to walk away at that point, uncomfortably reasoning that at least he's alive, he's surrounded by plenty of people, and that there wasn't anything we could have done.
But what we saw left an impression on all three of us. I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the sight of the body or by the seeming lack of public concern, even though we were on a crowded busy road. Or by the fact that I also walked by without doing anything.
We caught a taxi back to the hostel an hour or so later. It drove by the spot where we last saw the beggar sitting up. He wasn't there anymore.
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