The Army of Terracotta Warriors – Xi’an, China

As mentioned in my last post, the main reason a lot of people make a trip to Xi’an is to see the Army of Terracotta Warriors which is about an hour and half by bus from the city. They were discovered in 1974 by local farmers while drilling a well. The Army of Terracotta Warriors is also said to be the 8th Wonder of the World (at least according to the Chinese) and if you’ve made it to Xi’an, it would be a must see trip to make while you’re there.

Walking up to the entrance of the Museum

We took an early morning bus and when we were dropped off, we really had no idea where to go as there were no signs or anything to point you anywhere. There were only a couple of fruit vendors trying to make a sale on the side of the highway. For the ‘8th Wonder of the World’ you would think they would put a sign out front directing people where to go. Well, after about twenty minutes of trying to follow some tour groups, we eventually found what we thought was the entrance to the Army of Terracotta Warriors which was actually just a ticket office and spent the next fifteen minutes walking through souvenir shops until you actually make it to the entrance. I think they designed the layout of how to get into the exhibit perfectly, shuttling tourists through as many street vendors as possible.

Pit 1 – The largest collection of the Terracotta Warriors

We eventually made it to the front of the three buildings (pits) that housed the warriors, but first watched a film showing the history of how the warriors came about, the construction of them and the history leading up to present day. When we finally made it into the exhibits, it definitely seemed worth the trip.

Since they only discovered these warriors in 1974, there were still hundreds of them that were still being unearthed. In fact, from what we’d seen and as large as some of the buildings were, it seemed less than 30 or 40% had been uncovered so far. In the largest of the three exhibits, they were still working on a section of the warriors. It’s hard to believe that all warriors started to be built in 246 B.C. for Emperor Qin mainly for protection of the Emperor in his afterlife. The construction involved over 700,000 workers.

Downed soldiers… It was said that of all the 8,000 soldiers in this mausoleum, each soldier was individually painted and each one had different facial characteristics and expressions.

The entire trip to the 8th Wonder of the World took us about four hours and we were then headed back to Xi’an for a couple days more. Unfortunately the weather was either overcast and foggy or raining the entire time we spent in Xi’an. Our next stop would be Chengdu, China which we were looking forward to because it was around 10 hours further south than Xi’an so hopefully it would be a bit warmer there with some sun. But if you do make it to Xi’an, this exhibit is definitely worth the day trip…

Heading back from the Museum…