Terracotta Warriors

Today we revisit the Terracotta Warriors outside town, combined with the Huaqing Palace near to the warriors site.  It is possible to do it by public transport but some of us decided it would be eaiser getting a private car.  It turned out to be a great decision as it was a long day.

We left at 0730 and arrived after 0830 at the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum where there was hardly a queue.  That emperor reigned around 200 BC is considered to have unified China from a bunch of warring states.

First up, we entered Hall 1 which is believed to house about 6000 teracotta figures, of which over 1000 have been excavated.  These were discovered in 1974.

We continued outside to Hall 3, which is the smallest of the three pits in the area.  It originally contained 72 figures and horses.  Because it didn’t suffer fire damage, remnants of colour on the figures are more intact, but not that I could notice it.

We then visited Hall 2 which consisted of four areas.  The formation of the figures is more complex, showing a range of the military branches.

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With the crowds, especially in Hall 2, my interest was worn thin after Hall 1.  We continued to a nearb museum building before exiting the site via a food street or neighbourhood of sorts where we ate lunch.

Lishan Garden

We found our driver to take us to Lishan Garden.  There is a free shuttle that runs from the main site to Lishan Garden but we didn’t look too much into it.

While the main park where we started this morning had the major funerary pits of terracotta warriors, Lishan Garden is home to the actual mausoleum.  It also has numerous funerary pits and a hall for the famous bronze chariots.

The acutal mausoleum and underground palace is still sealed up and unexcavated.

Getting through to the site around 1400, golf carts took us to the different points of the garden where there were buildings of burial pits of various other personnel, eg. acrobat figures and civil officials.

Our interest was quite limited as we were only interested in seeing the bronze chariots which was held in a large two-storey hall.  They are half-sized models of actual horses and chariots.  The life-like and nature and detail was truly amazing, especially for something over two thousand years old.

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Everyone (not just us) skipped the last stop on the buggy, to make a hasty exit from Lishan Garden.

Huaqing Palace

From Lishan, our driver dropped us off near Huaqing Palace around 1530.

Wandering around, it was a collection of buildings, some with baths on the inside plus some landscaped gardens with ponds.  Nothing really wow’ed me and I couldn’t believe that the ticket price (NZD29) was exactly the same as for the Terracotta Warriors (including Lishan Garden).

Huaqing Palace.

We finished up around 1700 to begin the drive back to the city centre where we were met with traffic towards the end.  By the time we were dropped off around 1800, it felt like a long day.

Muslim quarter

We finished the day with dinner in the Muslim quarter.  We sat upstairs in a large restaurant.  Some of us had to wait downstairs for Pao Mo lamb, to bring it up to the table.  Strangely, the meat skewers ordered from next door were delivered up the stairs and to the table.  I love the pickled garlic left on the table for us to eat to our hearts’ content.

After long hot day, some chilled beer would have been nice (even though I normally don’t drink much).  But being a Muslim restaurant, we didn’t see any beer and didn’t ask.