The Terra-Cotta Warriors of Xian

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008. The finest moment of my day was the instant that I first saw the Terra-Cotta Warriors. I walked into the large building that covers the dig site, worked my way through the crowd to the railing, and saw thousands of ancient warriors standing at attention. “Awe-struck” might be the best description for this moment.

While I won’t bore you with all the details, here’s what you need to know about the mighty Terra-Cotta Warriors:

No two faces are the same in the Terra-Cotta army.

• While every warrior’s body is basically the same, every face on every head is different.
• The body of each warrior is hollow, but the warriors were not made using a form. They were made hollow by coiling rope-like strands of clay into the basic shape of a torso, and then shaped from there. Each and every warrior was made using this pain-staking, time-consuming process.
• The warriors were buried upon their completion in 210 BC, and since that time they were mostly undisturbed. They were forgotten completely by history and only re-discovered in 1974, by a simple farmer digging a well during a painful regional drought.
• The warriors were created to protect the emperor’s tomb (about one mile away from the warriors).
• Every stone warrior was buried with a complete set of weaponry, the idea being they would be ready to fight in the after-life.
• At this point, no warriors have come back to life and haunted tourists that visited the site (I asked our tour guide to be sure).

The Terra-Cotta warriors are a site to behold for sure, but the musuem is a little boring. Once you’ve had some time to take it all in, the rest of museum is worth a passing look.

Since we officially paid for a “tour,” we also had a chance to visit a real-life Terra-Cotta Pottery factory(!) and a real-life silk factory (!), each with a variety of incredibly over-priced goods. While I was tempted to purchase a one-half scale Terra-Cotta warrior for my Mom (she could put it in the garden), my concerns about it coming to life and consuming all the staples in lower-half of the pantry at my parents house prevented me from forking over my credit card.