{"id":161,"date":"2011-06-14T14:41:30","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T21:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/blog\/?p=161"},"modified":"2017-01-20T10:50:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T17:50:16","slug":"letter-from-the-imperial-tomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/?p=161","title":{"rendered":"A letter from the Imperial Tomb"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>
Lenka Traveler @ Terra Cotta Army<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Part 5 of 6: Xian Notes: June 1 – 2, 2011<\/p>\n

Photo Album<\/a><\/p>\n

Having visited many places around the globe, I must confess that the feeling of excitement of seeing an attraction sometimes looses its intensity. This is one of the unfortunate side effects of having too much of a good thing, I suppose.<\/p>\n

However, when I entered Pit No. 1 of the Museum of Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses<\/em>, I knew exactly why I just had to fly more than 10,000 miles to be here! The sight of hundreds of tall figures perfectly lined up in their trenches gave me the same feeling of being in awe as I\u2019ve gotten standing by the Pyramids and Inca fortresses. The ancients once again had managed to astonish me and I thank them for that.<\/p>\n

Pit No. 1 was constructed at the same spot where the warriors were discovered by an unsuspecting peasant in 1974. The funny story is that the guy\u2019s fellow farmers wanted him to hide the broken terra cotta pieces in order to avoid attracting too much attention from the authorities, but, thankfully, he didn\u2019t listen to his friends! We have actually met the discoverer – he now has a cushy job in the museum gift shop where he stamps his initials on the books you may buy in the shop. He makes about $3 on every autograph and seems to be quite pleased with his fate.<\/p>\n

The building looks like an enormous airplane hanger. Its roof floats high above the trenches and the soldiers, giving the visitors a feeling of being in an open field, rather than inside of a museum.<\/p>\n

The ancient warriors stand silently in battle formation. Their faces are stern, their eyes are focused on the invisible enemy, but their hands are empty because their bronze weapons were stolen by the grave robbers. Each soldier has unique facial features, hair styling and clothing, for each one of them is a representative of a different ethnic group and geographical area conscripted to guard the First Emperor of China during his afterlife.<\/p>\n

Pit No. 1 contains the remains of 8,000 terra cotta soldiers. This underground army was secretly deployed more than 2,200 years ago, but was soon discovered and smashed into pieces by the rebels and grave robbers. The displayed figures have been meticulously restored by the Chinese archeologists who still have plenty of work to do…<\/p>\n

Pits No. 2 and 3 display additional artifacts, such as bronze horses and the officer corp of the Terra Cotta Army. Honestly, I was so moved by the massive display of sheer power and skill in Pit No. 1 that I couldn\u2019t give justice to any additional exhibitions.<\/p>\n

Only one thing left to do at this point – have the traditional meal of the Shaanxi<\/em> province, which is known as the wheat basket of China. The meal (actually a banquet) consisted of copious amounts of delicious noodles, assorted dumplings, stir fried vegetables, meats, and many, many other amazing dishes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a very good day!<\/p>\n

Keep on traveling,<\/p>\n

Lenka\u00a0info@lenkatraveler.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 5 of 6: Xian Notes: June 1 – 2, 2011 Photo Album Having visited many places around the globe, I must confess that the feeling of excitement of seeing an attraction sometimes looses its intensity. This is one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3],"tags":[5,6,4],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-travel-blog","tag-china","tag-terra-cotta","tag-xian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}