China - Xian - Tarracotta Warriors and Big Wild Goose Pagoda

While in China we wanted to see terracotta soldiers in Xian.  While we had been told there were many of the soldiers our guide told us the history and explained the scope of the army.  Qin Shi Huang (the first emperor of China) decided that we needed an army in the after life (as in China it is believed that you  take your belongings with you when you die).  So he had an army of terracotta soldiers created and buried in pits around his own tomb.  While there are estimated over a hundred different pits in which the soldiers were buried, visitors can see only three.  The sheer scope is mind blowing as you can see in the pictures (the first pit is over three hundred meters long and contains over 6000 warriors).  The detail is also very amazing - remember these soldiers date back to the 3rd century BC.  Each warrior is different as they were modeling after real soldiers and depending upon when the soldier was made the clothes changed (you can see winter boots on some and summer shoes on others).  Further each soldier was painted and when they starting digging up the pits the color was still there, but faded with the sun and air.  In the pits you can see most of the soldiers were broken as a general back in the day robed the pits for the weapons and then burned them.  They have found at least one pit that was not ransacked and most of the soldiers are still in intact.  You can get replicates in all sizes ranging from a few inches to full size.  In addition to the terracotta army we got to see "Big Wild Goose Pagoda" which had very pretty gardens and some very interesting Buddhas.   Anyway here are some of the pictures.

 

The replicas we bought

How they found the pits

Pit 1 after they fixed the warriors (still more to uncover)

The hospital where they rebuild the soldiers

The officers meeting room (after rebuild)

The officer's meeting room (before rebuild)

More soldiers to uncover

One of the archers below you can see the color

One of the horses that was intact.

Don't know, but found this funny (They call it a wealth Buddha)