Xi'an - Terracotta Warriors

I took the public transport bus #307 from in front of the train station, out to the terracotta warriors. The ride cost 7 RMB which was paid to the conductor slightly after departure, and took around 45 minutes to get there going past a number of other anonymous (to me) tourist attractions which various Chinese people hopped off to see. Arriving, it stopped in a car park in front of some shops outside of the larger official car park where all the tourist buses stop. I followed signs past the carpark and over to the ticket office.

Once I bought a ticket and fended off around six Chinese people offering me audio tours or guiding or something, I set off on the long arduous trek to the actual site area.

From that plaza, to this plaza.

Then to these statues, which you have to walk around.

No climbing..

Onto this bit, where you go past some stalls in the middle selling random junk foods or cooking various street foods.

Then past a forest, and through another plaza to the actual site entrance.  Over to the right, people arrive in motorised carts which they paid 4 RMB to skip past all this walking, from the ticket office.  But all along this walk, there were numerous stalls selling souvenirs.  Maybe the cart-takers have to walk past all this on the way back.

Once inside the entrance, there's a museum over to the right.  Within the museum are various different kinds of terracotta warriors, with plaques describing their purpose.  Maybe this guy used to be holding something, I don't remember.

A .. crane?

The wrestler?  I don't recall.

A terracotta chest?

The museum hall.

Excavation hall 3.  I went through the three halls backwards.

Lots of solid looking mud, with stuff in it.  No really, this hall was the least impressive.

This photo may have come out bleary due to the no camera flash policy, but to me it just looked like lots of broken bits and pieces which were left laying around and allowed to become dusty.

A man with a horse.

A statue of a high ranking officer.

A statue of a middle ranking officer.  Looks like he used to be doing something with his hands to me.

Kneeling archer statue.  Same deal with the hands, couldn't they make a terracotta bow?

More rubble.   Not much more interesting when seen unblurry.

Entrance, or rather as I was going backwards, exit to hall 2.

Hall 2 pit room right-hand side.

Hall 3 pit room left-hand side.

And finally hall 2 pit.  This is a bit more like it.  Looks a lot less like caked dusty piles of dirt and junk.

Hall 1.

All the tourists who probably can't read English, given some of whom who are using their flash.

As one of the teeming masses of tourists, looking out from the balcony.

Heading back to the car park, I stopped off at the shops and stalls along the way.  I bought a box of terracotta statuettes as a souvenir, bargaining down from 50 RMB to 5 RMB.

Then walking all the way out back to the street-side car park, I took public transportation bus #914 back to the train station in town.  This cost 6 RMB, and stopped off several times along the way to just sit there waiting for something.  Or for the conductor lady to pop off and put her card in some machine to get it ticked off.

Most of the stalls along the road-side were selling what I assumed were onions.  But these, after seeing a few vendors with some cut open, are actually pomegranates.  The bus sat here for around 10 minutes.

During this time, some bloke drove in and dropped off some water bottles to the restaurant in the top of the photograph.

And the pomegranate sellers to the other direction sold a few more.

This... statue? was along the way back (we'd passed it on the way in too).

And that was it.  Onwards back to town.

Overall, given this and the Great Wall are two of the things which I had been brought up hearing about, I felt like I should have been awed but wasn't.  I think hiring a good guide who tied it all together with history and facts would have made all the difference, and not being likely to ever see it again I could probably gain a better appreciation if I watched a documentary on the subject to tie it all together.  In fact, that's a good idea and I'll try and remember to find one!