The Warriors in winter

Last weekend I finally made it to the Emperor's Warriors in Xi'an. Considering it was a snowy day at the end of November, I was surprised that the place was still fairly busy













(with Chinese tourists of course, not foreigners.) Visiting off peak certainly made the experience more pleasant as, with all Chinese tourist attractions, you have to run the gauntlet of souvenir shops, food stalls and street hawkers before you get anywhere near the site. In this case, it was almost a twenty minute walk between getting off the bus and getting a glimpse of the warriors! I think with crowds and the heat of summer, the experience would not have been a pleasant one...
Anyway, the site itself has been reasonably well managed and between buildings is actually very pleasant to walk around.





Here's a photo of the most biggest (and most famous) pit - the shot everyone recognises but, for me, it was the smaller pits of semi-excavated ruins that was the highlight. Looking at the broken 2000 year old statues who are no longer doing a very good job of guarding Emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb reminded me of very much of Shelley's Ozymandias, "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Plus, I have to say the lighting in the smaller pits was much, much better than in the biggest one. Many of the warriors haven't been excavated at all yet and are still covered over (hopefully left for the future when better techniques can remove them more safely!)







The last building was a small but well lit and well laid out museum and at its entrance was a giant puppet warrior which was used for the Beijing Olympics and must have been cool to see walking around.
It was a pleasant day out - not least for people watching. Watching Chinese tourists taking photos of their heads popping out from the top of a headless warrior's body is all part of the fun of life in China!