Anyone who comes to visit Xi'an has to visit the Terracotta Army, it's like when you go to Rome, you have to visit the Sistine Cha.. I mean the Coliseum. Yeah, so that's what I did today. My mommy and I joined one of those annoying bus tours that took us to Li Shan, some random museums, lame jade "factory", lame dried fruit market, and an over priced restaurant all before taking us to the Terracotta army. Li Shan (mountain) was cool, we took one of those gondolas up and walked down. My mom almost had a heart attack coming down the mountain, she's deathly afraid of heights, so it was a slowwww walk down. We passed the crevice that Chiang Kai Shek hid in when the Communists took over before exiling him to Taiwan. There was a Remonstration Pavilion to commemorate that incident (I had to look up what remonstrate meant >_<, sometimes I don't understand the English translations of Chinese sites of importance).
It's funny the way Communists tell "history" from the way the Nationalists tell "history, especially when it comes to Chiang Kai Shek. Coming from a Taiwanese Nationalist background, I was always taught how great and revered Chiang Kai Shek was, bravely fighting the Japanese at the same time as the Communists and creating the great, democratic state of Taiwan. These days, I've spent much more time in China than in Taiwan, and all I ever hear is how Chiang Kai Shek was greatly defeated by the cunning Mao and then forced to the island of Taiwan.
Anyway, the mountain was worth the visit. We were then brought to another place that had hot springs and ruins of Tang dynasty buildings. Mainly the baths of the emperor, empress, and people who worked for them. There was also this tower the emperor had built so his girlfriend could dry her hair faster by standing in it while the wind blew. I'm sure this was my favorite part, the rest was just, meh. Then, the tour brought us to a museum that housed a model of what they think Qinshihuang's tomb looks like. This place was really creepy and mildy lame. Creepy because of all the wax figures in weird positions and lame because, why the hell were we brought here anyway?? The next place was even more lame, a jade factory. I almost lost it when I saw the place, this is why I hate bus tours in China. Every tour has taken me to some sort of lame ass, tourist trap factory. Who knows how many silk, pearl, jade, tea, ceramic factories I've been to, I hate them. >:O So, I just sat in the bus, doing sudoku. They then took us to a restaurant for our lunch break. The place looked decent enough so we ordered two dishes, one was this huge plate of really wide noodles with lamb and spicy sauce, and the other was supposed to be a mushroom dish, with weirdly textured mushrooms (at least I think they were mushrooms). The bill came and the total was over 100kuai for two dishes, wth, tourist trap. We were then whisked off to a dried fruit market, much like the dried fruit market they took us to in Dalian when I was in China last, they had many dried fruit sticks and my mom bought too much. Of course she did.
Finally, we got to the terracotta warriors site. The place is huge and takes a deal of walking to get to the pit sites. There are three pits in all, the first (main army) is the largest, the second (cavalry, infantry) has barely been excavated, and the third (command post) has a couple dozen fully excavated figures. The buildings that have been built around the pits are massive and the exhibits showcasing the different pieces are interesting enough. Needless to say, I took a good amount of pictures of those terracotta warriors. It was a nice, long day and by the time we got back to downtown Xi'an, we were exhausted.
In conclusion: Xi'an, a definite must visit while in China.
Tomorrow: More around Xi'an city, then onto Nanjing!
Also, we still don't have plane tickets from Elong, they're a really sucky booking service.
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