XI'AN, CHINA
Yesterday I arrived in Shaanxi province and the ancient city of Xi'an, which has a rich history going back several thousand years, and in fact was the capital of China for over a thousand of them. Now it's a major modern city, but with many remnants of the old town still evident, including the old city walls, which hardly any Chinese cities still retain. I'm staying at a really conveniently-located hostel in the heart of the old city and have been doing a lot of wandering around the city center, soaking up the vibe. There's a real mixture of ancient and modern here which is interesting to observe, as well as a distinctly Muslim influence, since Xi'an was the eastern terminus of the Silk Road.
Some of Xi'an's most interesting sights are historical and archeological sites outside the city, so today I took a tour of some of the major ones. We began at the Huaqing Pool, which is actually a series of pools at the foot of Li Shan mountain, fed by bubbling hot springs. Many of the pools and their associated ceramic plumbing were built during the Tang Dynasty for various emperors and their concubines. The excavated ruins of the pools are on display today, along with some so-so exhibits about what the hot springs were like during that period.
After walking around the springs for an hour or so, we then proceeded to the Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Qin Dynasty emperor who united China and standardized its currency and writing back around 200 B.C. His "tomb" is really nothing more than a giant burial mound, although legend has it that beneath the hill were buried countless treasures including a relief map of China made with mountains of gold and silver and rivers of running mercury(!), supposedly guarded by a series of ingenious automatic defenses. Somehow I think if there were any truth to this they would have found some evidence, but I don't think they've excavated anything important under the hill. There is a sign onsite proclaiming that the levels of mercury beneath the mound were found to be many hundreds of times the normal level, though, so who knows? Anyway, we didn't do much here except take an electric car ride around the perimeter of the mound, and watch a performance of some dancers and acrobats in presumably Qin Dynasty costumes doing some pretty neat ceremonial harvest, hunting, and battle dances.
Qin Shi Huang's REAL legacy is not his tomb per se, but the fake army he buried nearby to protect his mausoleum. I'm talking about the world-famous Army of Terracotta Warriors, discovered by accident in 1974 by a farmer digging a well. This was the next stop on our tour, and the Main Event. There are over 6,000 of these life-sized figures arranged in battle formation, only some of which have been fully excavated and/or pieced together. But they're really magnificent. For some reason I had thought they were smaller (maybe because most of the photos I've seen are looking down into the pits where they stand), but they're actually life-sized, and many held real weapons when unearthed. They're incredibly detailed, too, down to their individual hairs and the treads on their shoes, and each face is different! What an incredible archaeological find, and an impressive sight to see (especially Pit 1, which requires an entire aircraft-hangar-sized building to shelter the main battalion of warriors). Another amazing find on display in the museum there is a sculpture of two fully-equipped bronze chariots and their horses, discovered nearby in 1980. Stunning.
The last stop on our tour was a bit of an anticlimax--this was the "Underground Palace"--basically a tourist attraction depicting what Qin Shi Huang's tomb might have looked like if the legends were indeed correct. But it's obviously someone's modern-day fantasy rather than any sort of archaeologist's or historian's reconstruction. With its miniature figures, models of animals and buildings, and hokey colored lights, it looked to me a little like someone's Christmas yard display gone horribly wrong.
After returning to town, I walked through the Muslim section of Xi'an, eager to try some of the cuisine that's supposed to be unique to the area. Sure enough, there were lots of street vendors selling colorful and completely unidentifiable foods, many of which looked and smelled great. But I was too timid to try any without knowing exactly what I was getting into (the chicken butt incident still fresh in my memory!). I finally found a restaurant with an English menu, but even then I wasn't sure I trusted their translations, as their dishes included "Sheet Iron Cow Spinal Cord (Hot Curry)" and my favorite, "Aluminum Dusting Powder Finless Eel Section." (I came this close to ordering that one just to see what they'd bring!) In the end I settled for a more ordinary-sounding dish of grilled beef filet in spicy cumin sauce, which nonetheless was quite tasty.
Yesterday I arrived in Shaanxi province and the ancient city of Xi'an, which has a rich history going back several thousand years, and in fact was the capital of China for over a thousand of them. Now it's a major modern city, but with many remnants of the old town still evident, including the old city walls, which hardly any Chinese cities still retain. I'm staying at a really conveniently-located hostel in the heart of the old city and have been doing a lot of wandering around the city center, soaking up the vibe. There's a real mixture of ancient and modern here which is interesting to observe, as well as a distinctly Muslim influence, since Xi'an was the eastern terminus of the Silk Road.
Some of Xi'an's most interesting sights are historical and archeological sites outside the city, so today I took a tour of some of the major ones. We began at the Huaqing Pool, which is actually a series of pools at the foot of Li Shan mountain, fed by bubbling hot springs. Many of the pools and their associated ceramic plumbing were built during the Tang Dynasty for various emperors and their concubines. The excavated ruins of the pools are on display today, along with some so-so exhibits about what the hot springs were like during that period.
After walking around the springs for an hour or so, we then proceeded to the Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Qin Dynasty emperor who united China and standardized its currency and writing back around 200 B.C. His "tomb" is really nothing more than a giant burial mound, although legend has it that beneath the hill were buried countless treasures including a relief map of China made with mountains of gold and silver and rivers of running mercury(!), supposedly guarded by a series of ingenious automatic defenses. Somehow I think if there were any truth to this they would have found some evidence, but I don't think they've excavated anything important under the hill. There is a sign onsite proclaiming that the levels of mercury beneath the mound were found to be many hundreds of times the normal level, though, so who knows? Anyway, we didn't do much here except take an electric car ride around the perimeter of the mound, and watch a performance of some dancers and acrobats in presumably Qin Dynasty costumes doing some pretty neat ceremonial harvest, hunting, and battle dances.
Qin Shi Huang's REAL legacy is not his tomb per se, but the fake army he buried nearby to protect his mausoleum. I'm talking about the world-famous Army of Terracotta Warriors, discovered by accident in 1974 by a farmer digging a well. This was the next stop on our tour, and the Main Event. There are over 6,000 of these life-sized figures arranged in battle formation, only some of which have been fully excavated and/or pieced together. But they're really magnificent. For some reason I had thought they were smaller (maybe because most of the photos I've seen are looking down into the pits where they stand), but they're actually life-sized, and many held real weapons when unearthed. They're incredibly detailed, too, down to their individual hairs and the treads on their shoes, and each face is different! What an incredible archaeological find, and an impressive sight to see (especially Pit 1, which requires an entire aircraft-hangar-sized building to shelter the main battalion of warriors). Another amazing find on display in the museum there is a sculpture of two fully-equipped bronze chariots and their horses, discovered nearby in 1980. Stunning.
The last stop on our tour was a bit of an anticlimax--this was the "Underground Palace"--basically a tourist attraction depicting what Qin Shi Huang's tomb might have looked like if the legends were indeed correct. But it's obviously someone's modern-day fantasy rather than any sort of archaeologist's or historian's reconstruction. With its miniature figures, models of animals and buildings, and hokey colored lights, it looked to me a little like someone's Christmas yard display gone horribly wrong.
After returning to town, I walked through the Muslim section of Xi'an, eager to try some of the cuisine that's supposed to be unique to the area. Sure enough, there were lots of street vendors selling colorful and completely unidentifiable foods, many of which looked and smelled great. But I was too timid to try any without knowing exactly what I was getting into (the chicken butt incident still fresh in my memory!). I finally found a restaurant with an English menu, but even then I wasn't sure I trusted their translations, as their dishes included "Sheet Iron Cow Spinal Cord (Hot Curry)" and my favorite, "Aluminum Dusting Powder Finless Eel Section." (I came this close to ordering that one just to see what they'd bring!) In the end I settled for a more ordinary-sounding dish of grilled beef filet in spicy cumin sauce, which nonetheless was quite tasty.
posted by John Kuge at 10:47 PM
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