The Smokey Train to the Ultimate Warriors

After a rainy trip to Nanjing I made my way by train up to Xi'an, the jumping off point to see the Terracotta Warriors. Traveling by train is a cost effective and efficient means of traveling overland in china especially taking the overnighter, but in every other respect it is absolute chaos.

The waiting area for a train that can carry thousands* of passengers only has about 50 chairs. Everyone else is relegated to jostling for position to wait in line because, unless you have a guaranteed sleeper bed, which I'm happy to say that I did, you don't even have a reserved seat.** So if you're traveling overnight you could conceivably spend the entire time standing or leaning against someone else's luggage. As a result, once the gates open to begin boarding it is an absolute chaotic pushy-shovy free-for-all. Even little old ladies are cutting in front of you and shoving from behind.

From asking around, this level of chaos is completely normal and accepeted in China. It seems that when your country has over one billion people in it, waiting patiently in a queue doesn't get you anywhere.It difficult to get used to though, this pushy shovey attitude (although there is something sort of humourous about getting shouldered out of the way by two 60 something ladies carrying giant handbags that look like they weigh more than my backpack), and when you combine it with the overt stares from curious Chinese who don't see westerners much it makes travelling a bit stressful.

I won't say too much about the toilets on the chinese trains except to say that if you can hold it in then that is probably better. But toilets and tight confines aside (bunks are stacked 3 high in the same space that normal trains fit two bunks) the worst had to be the smoking. Technically smoking is not allowed on trains except in the area between carriages or in the bar car. But since there are a billion people in China and all of them smoke and there are no doors separating the carriages from the tiny platform in between carriages then smoking is essentially allowed or at least tolerated. This meant it was very uncomfortable sleeping on the top bunk where all the smoke would rise and just hang there and suffocate would be sleepers.

Xi'an is a former Chinese capital and one of the few ancient cities to have it's stone walls intact squaring off a 12km perimeter. These walls are something like 18 metres tall and wide enough to have 2 lanes of traffic on the top with cool looking watchtowers evenly spaced for defensive purposes and surrounded by a moat.


For me this was an equally impressive legacy to the Ming dynasty as was the Terracotta Warriors are to the Qin dynasty. Interestingly one of the main reasons that the current walls are so well preserved is that no one attacked them once they were finished so it's unclear whether or not they would have stood up, although they do look pretty impressive even now.


Once again my laissez-faire style of tourism had me pleasantly surprised since the only reason I went out of my way to go to Xi'an***was to see the Terracotta Warriors so the cool ancient wall was a bonus and walking around it, (even though it was raining) was pretty unique with the ancient and classically designed buildings on the inside of the wall and giant glass skyscrapers on the outside making for an interesting contrast.

The Terracotta Warriors are easy to access with tourist busses leaving from the Xi'an train station regularly every day. An entire tourism industry has been built up around the clay pits where the warriors were discovered. Thirty years ago the area was a farmer's field until one farmer happened upon the warriors while drilling a well.**** Now there are climate controlled hangars surrounding the pits with all the tourist amenities including KFC.*****

There are also relentless touts selling all kind of crappy merchandise or offering services such as tour guides. I was pretty disappointed in my guide because, even though I negotiated a reasonable price and she spoke english very well, she didn't really provide me with much factual information that I couldn't have got just from reading the displays and she had absolutely no passion for the site that some call the "8th wonder of the world". And when you've been up all night on a smokey train some infectious enthusiasm would have been welcome.

I did buy a crazy hat to add to the collection but stopped wearing it as it turned out to be a magnet for vendors and may as well been a sandwich board that read "Come and bother me. As you can see by my hat I like to buy stupid crap."

The statues themselves lived up to the hype and were incredibly impressive with one exception: They estimate that there are about 8,000 individual statues and they quote this figure in all the tourist publicity brochures and guidebooks etc. So far though, they have only unearthed and repaired something like 2,500 of them. So when you are expecting from the publicity to see an army of 8,000 strong and only 1/3 of the troops show up is slightly disappointing. Although it's difficult to argue 2,500 unique statues lined up in formation to "guard" Emperor Qin's tomb (a few kilometres up the road) is still pretty impressive, if maybe just a touch egomaniacal on his part.


Photos: 1)One of many different angles from which I took photos of the statues. 2) Crowded train from view from the top bunk. 3-5) Xi'an city walls. Note the raincoat...6-9)More views of the 8th wonder. Not shown here the 40 other "keeper" photos of statues.


*Or however many.
*The general admission seats are a lot cheaper though so that's something at least.
***And it really was out of my way. If you consult a map you won't see many routes from Nanjing to Beijing that go anywhere near Xi'an but hey that's just how I roll. It could be a while till I'm back around this way.
****The farmer is now quite a celebrity in China and was available to sign autographs, I would have except paying for the autograph of someone who essentially made a lucky find does not agree with me. It's like getting the autograph of a lottery winner. It's not like he did anything remarkable. He didn't even get the well dug!
*****KFC is by far the most popular western franchise in China and since it was everywhere else I wasn't all that surprised to see it at the Terracotta Warriors complex.