That’s a Lotta Terracotta!

An 11-hour overnight train ride southwest of Beijing brought us to the city of Xi’an, one of the ancient imperial capitals of China (from the 11th century BC to the 10th century AD). After reading and hearing many a horror story about traveling on China’s rail system, we were quite pleasantly surprised and relieved with how comfortable and non-dramatic our experience was. The only negative part of the ride was the people in adjacent cabins abusing the no-smoking rule, but such is China. No bedbugs (phew).

We found Xi’an to have far more atmosphere and character compared to Beijing and enjoyed exploring the city on foot. The old historic part of the city is surrounded by an ancient wall that runs a length of 26km and is wide enough for pedestrian and bike traffic on top. We ascended the wall one night to snap some photos of the massive Chinese New Year’s lantern display which they had set up along almost the entire length of the south wall. We also spent quite a lot of time wandering the narrow streets of the Muslim Quarter where we found some cheap bargains, a fantastic soup-dumpling restaurant, and tons of delicious food carts. Our only other city excursion was to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which was a leisurely 7-story climb to a nice view of the city.

Xi’an is most famously known for the Terracotta Warriors. The first Qin Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, constructed an army of over 8000 life size clay warriors. The army was complete with chariots and horses and is dated back to around 210 BC. The intention was for the Terracotta Army to be buried with the Emperor and it is believed that its purpose was to protect the Emperor and help rule another empire in his afterlife. Our spritely tour guide, Jia Jia, explained that some 700,000 artisans and workers were enslaved to construct the army and every single one was destined to die as the emperor was intent on keeping the whole project a secret. It’s rumoured that all the workers were also buried within the giant necropolis.

The actual tomb of Qin Shi Huang was pointed out to us just outside of the Terracotta Warrior Museum – a grassy mound shaped like a pyramid. Apparently it hasn’t be excavated because the soil shows high levels of mercury which according to ancient writings were an intentional protective measure. This Emperor was pretty keen on these crazy large scale projects – ordering both the construction of The Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army during his 25 year reign. I’m by no means a historian but I wonder if being 13 years old at the start of his reign had anything to do with it? I mean, what 13-year-old boy wouldn’t want an army of life size G.I. Joes? Am I right?

One of the most interesting things about our tour of the Terracotta Warriors Museum was seeing one of the farmers that made their discovery in 1974. Apparently the Chinese Government paid him 10 Yuan ($2 CDN) for his findings, which hardly seemed fair, but Jia Jia assured us he was doing quite well for himself. We spotted him sitting in one of the souvenir shops having a snooze while making himself available to autograph the books they had for sale there.

The following day we climbed another mountain. Apparently we just can’t get enough. At the peak of every previous climb I have said to Andrew, “The next time I express interest in climbing a mountain, please remind me that I don’t want to climb any more mountains.” The volcano in Chile was painful as was the trek in Peru. Why do I keep forgetting about the pain?! Anyway…

Huashan is one of China’s five sacred Daoist mountains. Unfortunately, we had to cheat. Our day tour did not afford us enough time to climb it from the bottom to the top. It takes anywhere from 6-8 hrs to climb up depending on which of the 5 peaks you are aiming for, plus the added time back down again. We had to first take the cable car up to an altitude of about 1500m just below the North Peak (1613m), the lowest of the peaks. We had 4 hours before having to return to the base of the mountain to catch our bus back to Xi’an. We planned to only climb to the South Peak (the highest at 2160m), and then down and up again to the East Peak (2100m). The views were amazing… as long as you didn’t look down. All the routes up Huashan are steps painstakingly carved into the granite. One particular section of the climb is called “Black Dragon Ridge”. If you can imagine it, picture a mountain ridge about the width of two average people standing side by side. Along the ridge is a carved out staircase and on either side is a sheer rock face dropping well over 1000m. It was awesome! The view from the top of South Peak was breathtaking but being freezing cold and very windy we only stayed a few minutes to enjoy the view and snap a few photos before heading toward East Peak. On our way down from East Peak we finally found a sign pointing towards the famously dreaded “Plank Walk”. At this point we literally only had 45 minutes to sprint back down to the cable car and get to the bottom of the mountain to catch our bus but our curiosity got the better of us and we headed back up along another path. The plank walk is a series of wooden boards, maybe 1.5-2ft wide, bolted into the side of a cliff with no railings whatsoever and again, over 1000m drop off the side! Apparently, the plank walk has gained so much of an uproar amongst foreigners over the years that they now offer a “safety harness” to walk across it… at a cost of course. Excellent! Off we went! To our disappointment, when we got there, we found it was closed for the winter. Worse than that, we only had 25 minutes to run back down the perilous trail to catch our bus.

There are a few temples scattered amongst the trails and on top of the peaks. We were amazed to learn that all the supplies required by these places were entirely carried up by porters. Furniture, building materials, food, everything is brought up on foot from the bottom of the mountain. Whatever the reason – perhaps the supplies are too heavy or too big to put in the cable cars, or maybe the cost is too high – they don’t utilize it for this purpose at all. As we descended that day we ran into many porters carrying everything from garbage down to steel piping up. Pretty amazing and definitely made me think twice about complaining that the camera felt heavy around my neck!