Emperor Qin's Terracotta Army

This morning we woke up to snow on the ground! So we bundled up and headed down to breakfast. The food was ok, a mixture of Chinese breakfast things and western breakfast items so everyone found something they could eat.

Our first stop today the Banpu Museum and site of the oldest known society dating back 6,000 years. This matriarchal society had figured out how to make waterproof houses, moats to keep out unwelcomed guests and pottery with sophisticated kiln techniques. Here we saw some human remains, foundations of their houses, and many piece of well preserved pottery.

From here we went to the only official terracotta warrior workshop where we got to see first hand how they made and still make the famous Qin dynasty terracotta warriors. We also got to try this technique out ourselves, it was way more difficult than it looked. The warriors found in Emperor Qin's tomb were made out of molds and this is the technique still used today. The only thing that was hand crafted was the head. First they used a mold to create the basic shape but each head was then individually worked on creating unique features for each one. No two heads look the same.

After seeing the workshop we went to the site of the Qin terracotta warriors. The warriors were found accidentally in 1953, when 2 farmers were digging a well for water for their farm and they dug up 2 heads of the terracotta army. Since then the site has been and is still being excavated. All but 1 of the warriors found so far were all smashed. Only one warrior was found in tact, a kneeling archer. It is said that after emperor Qin died the Han dynasty took over a few years later and did not care for the Qin so they destroyed the mausoleum by setting fire to it and much of the infrastructure of the tomb where the warriors are was made of wood, which burned and collapsed on all of the soldiers. All of the soldiers that are in the pit now have been painstakingly reconstructed and they are still in the process of reconstructing more. There are three pits that have been uncovered here, pit 1 has 6,000 warriors – infantry and captains, pit 2 has archers, generals and cavalry and pit 3 has guards. Pit 3 was not destroyed by the Han dynasty, the guards fell over naturally and so they were much easier to put back together.

The tomb of the emperor is 1.5 kilometers away from where the soldiers were found and has yet to be excavated as his tomb is floating in a river of mercury.

After the museum we went to dinner and then out for a foot massage. The foot massage was amazing. They actually massaged more than our feet too. Everyone wants to go back there tomorrow night.