After a very busy morning and another Over Abundance of food at lunch, we headed out to the Lintong District of Shaanxi China. The warriors were buried with the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Quang in 210 – 209 BC and were buried with him to protect him in the afterlife.
They were discovered by a local farmer in 1974 and include warriors, chariots, and horses. Each one varies in height and appearance but is life-size. It is estimated there are 8,00 warriors, 30 chariots, and 520 horses, and 150 chariot horses. The figures in pit 1 all face east. The emperor’s tomb is about a mile away from the pit and is currently under excavation and not open to public viewing.
Seeing pictures and viewing the replicas at EPCOT in Disney World did not do it justice. The pits are more massive than we expected and we didn’t realize they were life-size.
Before we got to the site we stopped at a factory that makes replicas of the warriors by hand. We had the opportunity to watch the artists at work. The man in the pictures will actually carve a replica of your head and the cost was not as much as we thought, it converted to about $1,000.00 that included shipping and insurance.
They had life-size figures outside where you could stand behind for a picture.
A few pics from the bus on the way to the Terracotta Army.
We arrived around 2:00 and our guide took us through the 3 pits. We then had some free time to explore on our own. The crowds were very heavy so we headed to the gift shop and got a soda. We saw everything there was to see, the circle vision was not working today. It was sad to see so much destroyed, only a few pieces were found to be intact.
This area is where the restoration work was being done. The work was painstakingly difficult to try and catalog and piece back together thousands of pieces.
Thanks for reading,
Chuck
