Friday April 22nd

This morning when I woke up, I felt absolutely fine!  I had slept well and the curtains in this HUGE room weren’t quite so blacked out which probably helped us wake up gradually.

My appetite had returned – this morning I had 2 croissants, 1 pastry, a bowl of cereal and a yoghurt!  Oh how I had missed having a proper breakfast!!  We left early and set out for the Terracotta Warriors.

Terracotta Mathew

First though, we stopped off at the workshop where the replicas were made, which was really interesting.  From the tiny ones to the life-size ones, each was finished off by hand and each one was unique.  Also, we saw some woodwork and lacquer here, and although very pretty, it was very time consuming work for those making it.  30 coats of lacquer, 30 times polishing...wow!  Eventually we got to the shop and Mathew bought 4 warriors including 2 for himself, and I bought 4 including 1 for myself, and the others will be souvenirs.  They were surprisingly light and inexpensive too.  I had no idea how I would fit them into my suitcase with everything else...

Terracotta Replica Factory

Eventually we got to the end but I found myself eyeing up some Jade,  There was one piece which I liked the look of, but the price was 1280 Yuan (£125).  I wasn’t expecting the assistant to want to haggle, but she started by saying her mother was the designer and offered 890 Yuan.  I managed to get down to 750 Yuan (£70) which I thought was a decent price for what I knew was definitely real Jade with hallmarked silver.

We left the workshop at 10:30am which left us wondering if our time looking at the Warriors would be cut short.  But fortunately, we spent a good amount of time there, looking in all 3 pits and we had our own time at the end to find the Museum to look at the bronze chariots.

Terracotta Army

When we walked into the building where the main warriors stood, it was so crowded and busy.  Sort of what you would expect at a place like this really.  What did surprise me was the number of warriors on display here – I was actually expecting to see more stretching right to the back, but it appears that excavations hadn’t gone that far!  I wasn’t disappointed, it was a little bit like the Stonehenge effect for me – I was expecting more but I was still impressed by the workmanship.  I think part of it may have had to do with the photos I have seen before, they were probably taken at a lower angle or even eye level, which made them look larger and you got a better sense of being “with” them.  When we looked at them, they were fairly low down – we must have been about 4 metres higher than the Warriors, but the best view was actually right around the other side, as it turned out we were much lower and closer to the warriors there.  Oh, how great it would have been to walk among them and see them at eye level!

Bronze Chariot

Finally we had free time so we went into the Museum to see the bronze chariots which were about a third of the actual size.  While we went around the place, many of the people in our group kept asking us questions as they all now knew that we were both Archaeologists!  So we ended up talking about archaeology but for once, I didn’t mind.  Yes, a place like this would be great to dig at and even I would have an interest in doing that!

We met up in “The Tea House” and bumped into Lemon who was taking another Wendy Wu tour group around on a shorter holiday, more of a whistle stop tour.  I think we chose the right holiday to come on!

Tang Dynasty Show

We had lunch in a hotel on the 2^nd floor on which there was a HUGE shop which seemed SO eclectic, it was more like a slightly more sophisticate market, only indoors – as everyone seemed willing to haggle their prices.  We were a little annoyed at the people who enjoyed stalking us around the tables though...!

We got back onto the bus and back to our hotel where we wrote our last postcards and I wrote my journal.  Tonight we would be having a “Dumpling Banquet” followed by a Tang Dynasty Show.

Tang Dynasty Show

The show was a little Las Vegas style, and was okay but not quite as good as the others we had previously seen!  I didn’t like many of the dumplings – we had 18 courses of dumplings (or rather, 18 dumplings) and I think I ate about 5 of them... but that evening I tucked into my Easter mini-eggs back at the hotel!