Traveling in China Part VI: The infamous Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an - Original Work

Being in Xi'an of course meant that we needed to go and see the Terracotta warriors, one of the most famous archeological discoveries the world has ever known, and it really is something to see.

Normally Sabrina and I tend to avoid things like this, we hate standing in line and paying money to go and hang out with a bunch of obnoxious tourists and walk around on the pre defined path. It's not our style, and we usually just don't enjoy it, but the Terracotta Warriors, like the Forbidden City is an occasion where you don't really mind because it really is just that amazing.

The Terracotta army was constructed to be part of the emperor's massive burial complex, and it is indeed true that each one has a unique face, and originally they all carried real weapons. The bodies are made up of separate pieces that were fastened together after their individual formation(arms, legs, torso, and head were made separately then combined) and originally were each painted, though the paint has mostly deteriorated or flaked off on most. Each different figure was made unique by molding clay to the face during construction in order to give it a distinct and separate look. The soldiers also vary in height, and arranged according to their rank.

As with many of my previous posts about our travels in China I'm going to let the photos do the talking, with some brief captions, as to describe the army in detail would make this a very long article. If you are interested in the history of the Terracotta Warriors there is a lot of interesting information on the wikipedia article here

Entering the main museum area, you are greeted by this fellow, an incredibly well preserved example, he is contained in a protective glass display.

You'll notice this particular figure is in a kneeling stance, which makes him even more rare and unique than others, as his entire body would have been built as a unique piece as opposed to the mass assembly style and facial differentiation of the others.

An elderly Chinese man admiring the warrior.

Another very well preserved example protected by glass.

He had a really cool head detail.

When you enter the dig area one of the first things you find out is that there were horses as well, and chariots!

The four horses from a side angle, they looked so cool.

Unfortunately many have been lost to time.

Fragments and pieces slowly being revealed.

It looks crazy, all these figures piled up there. Originally the whole area was actually arranged the way that a camp would be if it were ready to go into battle.

The warriors are even standing at attention, weapons in hand.

Headless warriors.

You can see that not only are the faces unique, but the bodies varied as well. There were several different molds used to create the entire army.

Many of the excavated warriors are arranged and catalogued.

There are a LOT of them.

Waiting.

Buried in time.

These ones were taken out mob style. Just kidding, I'm not sure why parts of them were covered, I assume it was to protect them somehow.

This poor guy was fully wrapped.

I loved the light isolating this one guy.

Walking around the excavation area you can actually get pretty close to some of them.

You can see with this guy how unique each face really is.

A full shot of him.

This massive hangar has been built around the excavation site and is now the museum.

Pieced back together.

#42. You can see that this fella has been reconstructed as well, the paint on his face and some of his details is much more in tact than most. Apparently they would have looked very life like originally. This guy was my favorite out of all of them, he just looked so cool.

Well that's it for our visit to the Terracotta army! I hope you enjoyed seeing this amazing historical wonder, we sure did. Next up on our journey through China we will be heading to an amazing rural village in the Yongshuo area where we rode up the river on a bamboo boat, hiked up an amazing mountain, had a random photoshoot with a couple we met and saw the amazing karst mountains which were the inspiration for the scenery of the movie Avatar! As always if you like the post feel free to throw me an up vote, I always appreciate them, and be sure to follow me @dexter-k on Steemit to keep up with all our travels and see more original content all the time. If you want to share this post with your friends on Steemit I'd be super stoked as well, all you have to do is click that little rectangular arrow button to the right of the vote counter to re-steem me! Thanks so much for reading and for all your support.

Dexter