The Man from Xi'an

Wie Gehts.

We have spent the last two days in Xi'an (a quaint little town of six million) plonked in the middle of china. This is the original seat of power of China, being the home of the Qin (pronounced Chin as in Chin-a) dynasty (300BC), and home to a few of their more extravagent efforts: Yesterday (28th May) we did a cycle ride around the walls of the city, 14km circumference on a 10m high and 15m wide modest effort in masonry, (took an hour to cycle).

Accomodations have also been interesting, we have been staying inside the city walls in a converted textile factory, now home to a hotel and restaurant, in a seemingly nuclear-proof bunker of a basement, with a large and friendly contingent of mosquitos, who have certainly been enjoying my company in particular. For the princely sum of $4 per night it is hard to complain. (moreso when considered after the consumption of several $0.50 650ml beers.) Food is excellent, though communication is at best difficult. It is hard to overestimate the language barrier when you share no commonality, not alphabet, not consonents, not phonems, not intonation. Ordering a meal last night required 15 minutes of vigorous hand waving, recourse to paper and speaking loudly and slowly, with an end result of about 50% of what we were after. Mandarin is an absolute bastard to learn, compounded by the fact that pronunciation varies throughout China.

Today it was off to visit the last resting place of the 1st Qin emperor (300BC), again an understated little affair that involved the efforts of up to 750000 people at a time over a 37 year period, but unfortunately the task at hand was a dirt rather than a stone pyramid, and so has subsided a little in the following couple of millenia (50-80m high, covering about 10 hectares). The core of this mound/hill contains the burial chamber which is apparently high in mercury (invaluable to the prehistoric dynastic ruler-about-town) to the point where it is a dangerous.

Second stop was the famous terracotta warriors, This is a massive effort (though considering the size of the aforementioned workforce they may have knocked it out in a couple of saturday afternoons). Several hectares, only partially explored and excavated, now under stadium sized roofs. They have uncovered several thousand of these uber-sized ken-dolls, and think that there are many thousand more in existance, in underground barracks extending over many hectares. Crazy thing is they were created and buried in secret, each an individually shaped and baked correspondant to an existing person. So much effort expended on creating an army that while low-cost on povisioning, would only be dangerous if it fell on you. We are beginning to appreciate that these Chin(ese) fellas don't do things by halves.

Next stop Yunnan province and Tiger-Leaping Gorge. 32hours on a train, then more climbing at altitude. Wooo. Yay.