Terra Cotta Warriors Near Xian, China

Now on to the Terra Cotta Warriors. Like everywhere, we didn’t get enough time to spend there, but did get a chance to see most everything. We went into Pit One, which is the most spectacular, as there are many of the life sized statues (as a lawyer, I keep wanting to write “statutes” rather than “statues”) are fully or almost all intact, including many of the horses. The terra cotta warriors are thousands of life size warrior statues that were created under the rule of the First Emperor, Qin.(pronounced Chin), as he and his regents wanted him to be able to continue to rule in the next life. The project was started when Qin was only 13 years old. He is called the First Emperor as he united the seven warring factions (with much death and bloodshed). The unification was done by force, but a united China emerged from it. Qin’s tomb has not yet been excavated, but the emperor’s statute apparently has been. The warriors were discovered by accident by a farmer in 1974. When they were first excavated, the warriors were painted, but within just a few months after having been exposed to the air, the paint oxidized away. As such, many of the other digs are left untouched until they can figure out a way to dig them up and preserve them with the colors on them.

Anyway, we saw the warriors, and they are amazing. The detail to each face of the soldiers is unique to each one as far as I could see, and 100% realistic. The clothing of the warriors is uniform and amazing in details. Many of the warriors were smashed, many intentionally, other by, I think, natural cave ins. We then saw the other two pits. Pit three has some intact warriors, and I believe that may have been were the statue of the emperor was found. We also got to see the two half-sized chariots. If I heard correctly, they were found broken into pieces, but were slowly and carefully restored (see photo).


Now for a lawyerly moment. This shows, I guess, that I am truly a torts attorney. Mom and I were walking around on the floors, and they were very slippery. The indoor floors there was made of granite squares of about 1 ½ meters square, and were slick as could be. Many of the floors were slopped and I had to take baby steps going up or down in order to not end up splatted on the floor. I also noticed many other “permanent hazards” on the walk ways, thing s which, fortunately (in my humble, correct, opinion) we don’t see much of at home. We can thank English common law for that.

NOTE. Face-book and Google blog pages are not accessible from China, so it was at first difficult to be able to post my blogs. I posted the first one from South Korea, and Rochelle posted the second one for me, as I included it in an email. However, after I emailed my post to Rochelle, I was prevented from sending any more emails, although I could still read the emails in my in-box. So, how did I solve the problem, you ask? Being the nerd that I am, I realized that I could log onto my computer through my Logmein connections, and open a web browser on my work computer, and copy, paste, and post through there. Now that I have revealed my secret , I hop that the eyes that be don’t read this and put a stop to that. I better update my VNC just in case (plan B).