Day 6: Terra Cotta & School Visit
GRAND DYNASTY CULTURE HOTEL
The hotel we're staying at in Xi'an puts our previous hotel to shame in so many ways. I talked about it a bit before, but we really are spoiled here. Pumping A/C, multiple pillows, a refrigerator, a pool, a fish pond with sculpture around it, and a breakfast of champions. Best of all - the dumplings from last night were available again today as part of a spread that makes every continental breakfast I've ever seen look more like a sad island. I sat and ate with Logan (Hawai'i) and Melissa (Georgia) until I went and FaceTimed with Devin and Jonah a bit outside at the pond before it got too hot and before we had to leave.
TERRA COTTA WARRIORS
Come 8a, we boarded the bus. I hadn't talked much to Jason (Oklahoma), so I sat with him on the bus for our conversation. He's an interesting dude, as are many of the folks here. I'm hoping to have a quick bio of all of them, probably on my train ride to Shanghai. But he's a calculus teacher and TOY 2015 who just left the classroom to finish working on his dissertation.
When we finally arrived at the Terra Cotta site, we were greeted with a rather new, old phenomenon. Certainly the age of such a marvel - dubbed the "8th Wonder of the World" by President Clinton in 1998 - is older than Christ himself. But the ruins weren't discovered until 1974, and this building wasn't opened until 1979. So, without a doubt, this a young find of an ancient order. It's estimated there will be upwards of 20 buildings, but so far archaeologists have only opened 3 - and 1 of them is hardly excavated at all.
In total, they estimate there are 6,000 terra cotta warriors. Of those warriors, you can tell the different ranks or castes of them based upon a few different characteristics: their location in the defenses (the poor farmers are up front, probably with no weaponry), their hair or hat, and then the size of their bellies. Yes, in China they call a "belly" a "general." The most amazing thing about them, to me, is the minute detail. It's hard to see in the textbook photos we see of the Warriors, but the intricacies of how the hair is tied up all the way down to the BUTTONS UNDER THE SANDALS are as ornate as they are numerous. I couldn't imagine how many people worked out his thing to get it done in the 5-10 years it's estimated it took to construct, place, and finalize upon the emperor's death. Equally impressive is the fact that they colored the warriors with chalk and paint after firing them in the kiln. So far, it's been difficult to keep that upon excavation, but some have a slight stain of color as they unearth them month by month.
For the Chinese, the special thing there is two bronze carts that have been reassembled over the course of 7 years from 3,000 pieces each. They are gorgeous, and they were probably constructed to carry the emperor's concubines to the next world with him. For my younger readers or those not in the know, these are the emperor's "girlfriends." That's as PC as I'll go here.
One thing I enjoyed doing was speaking with several of the people I saw there. After seeing Chinese Han and other minorities time and time again, I was able to pick out more white faces in this crowd than others. Two I struck up a conversation with was an older couple who are from Arkansas and are over here as teachers at an international Christian school. They've been living in Chengdu for 3 years now, and the husband was the elementary principal while the wife was the director of counseling there. Their son married a local Chinese woman and they had the most adorable kids, including a girl of about 6 years old who was on my side and listening to my every word for a good 30 minutes. Coupled with the notion that I was thinking about Devin when I bought some ice cream here (chocolate = good, green tea = bad) and buying a miniature set of Terra Cotta Warriors and thinking where Devin and I could put them in the new house, I had some serious homesickness for my family the first time this trip.
I also enjoyed getting to chat with Dana, TOY from NY. There are many happy folks here, but she's always smiling. She's a beautiful, intelligent lady, and I didn't know she had kids older than me. She said she's the "token granny" on the trip, and we shared a few good stories from the classroom.
There's a lot of mystery regarding Emperor Qin, the man who built this tomb for himself. Though he was only Emperor from age 38 to age 50 (when he died of a heart attack, probably because he regularly consumed mercury thinking it'd give him eternal life), he did good by being the first to unify this vast land. However, he did so by conquering and then dominating the neighboring kingdoms, and the oral history of his iron fist is almost as renown as the name we use for his country (Qin is pronounced "Chin," and from there we derive the name "China."). That's because the historian who told his history was a man who was castrated by the emperor for defending a general who the emperor was trying to prosecute. So, no "manliness" led to a deity becoming a dictator.
That's not to sugarcoat Qin's reign. The dude made his enemies his slaves (as many did at that time and, let's face it, some still do), but most of all he buried all the people who designed the Terra Cotta Warriors alive with him when he died, just so nobody would know how to do this again or, possibly, its location either. Still, Jun reminded us that historians have bias in how they report - or fail to report the facts. This lesson was compounded when I had a quick aside with Chris. While I recalled that we westerners name this land for the dominating unifier, they call their land "Zhonguo," or "Middle Country." In contrast, the Chinese call the United States "Maiguo," or "Beautiful Country." Makes them look a heckuva lot better than us, doesn't it?
The mystery of Terra Cotta extends to today in many other forms. Chris told us that it's going to take "many lifetimes" to completely unearth this magical find. I was immediately drawn to a comparison of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which is currently (and remains) the longest running continued construction project in the world. The church, which began in the late 1800s, is still being built to this day, and will take at least another dozen years to complete (Devin and I saw this for our honeymoon). But that was an intentional build with an end in mind. The Chinese don't even know what they're going to find as they keep digging at this site. Heck, they haven't even opened up Emperor Qin's tomb.
But one really great thing about this is the excavation is a universal finding for all. We saw a group of middle school students from DC there on a language immersion camp, and they were given brushes and plastic wands and told to dust off and even glue one of the warriors together. Talk about an icebreaker! For those of you keeping score, do you think that we'd ever let Xi'an residents go to Mt. Vernon and dust off a new stable of George Washington's? Me thinks not.
Lunch, like any other meal here in Xi'an, was a treat. These noodles are amazing, and the dumplings are even better. For how hot it was outside, however, I decided to have a salad. I didn't even think about it then, but that may have been a mistake here. Hopefully I don't have to go in too much detail as to why my body would be telling me such.
That stomach brew only worsened when we reached our next (and final official) stop of the day - the Xi'an Taoli Tourism & Culinary Institute. It was fun to watch one chef dice a Chinese radish into a rose and a cucumber into a crane, while another made the delicious noodles (and Rich of Minnesota did a pretty bang-up job replicating it, if I might add), and, best of all we got to make some DUMPLINGS (and then eat them afterward, of course!). Yet the thing I'll remember this place for most of all is the bathroom.
Here's a quick side note on the Chinese bathroom. Many - especially the more rural Chinese - think that the toilet seat is a gross Western construct. If you think about it, a toilet seat is touched by many butts in a day, so, yes, I get their point. But I want you to think of the grossest public bathroom you've ever been in. Then think about what the porta-Johns look like after huge concerts like Firefly. Be Mendelev, cross-pollinate those two bad boys, and then this bathroom - and many public Chinese bathrooms - are much worse. If I got into the detail of it, I'd gross you out. So I'll stop there. But let's just say the difference in hygiene doesn't stop there. We read about how some kids don't wear diapers and just have slits in their pants to bend over and poop or pee through the slit. I didn't believe it until I saw a kid (about 3 years old) with those pants on. I was tempted to take a photo of it just because of how foreign it was to me, but the teacher in me kicked in and said "you cannot take a photo of a kid's bum." So I didn't. But worst of all was the kitchen we were in at the culinary institute. This gross bathroom was between 2 kitchens. Flies were traveling all over the place, and then I noticed that when the chefs wash their hands, it's like how 5th graders do it. They give a quick spritz of water and they don't use soap. God, my stomach is grumbling just typing about this, literally and figuratively.
Thankfully Shelly, a very thoughtful elementary teacher from South Dakota who reminds me in many a way of my own mother, was kind enough to place some peppermint oil on me to alleviate the stomach pain. So far it's working splendidly.
For now (6:10p our time as I write), our day is officially over. We headed to the Muslim Quarter of the town, where we can hopefully enter the Grand Mosque and then do some shopping and eating on the street side. It was such a hot day (it topped 100 today and many of us are feeling the effects of heat exhaustion), Jun decided to kick this can down the schedule. We'll see how many of the 43 of us make it out on the town for the evening.
Tomorrow we view the Wild Goose Pagoda and then fly back to Beijing, stay the night, and then most of my new friends depart back for the States while this guy's trip continues on.
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