Xi'an
looks like: thousands of terracotta warriors.
smells like: thousands of terracotta warriors (a bit like the art room at school, an old clayish kind of smell, but without the aroma of teenage armpits).
sounds like: an incredibly nasal, whiny, audio guide that I wanted to stomp on.
tastes like: beer at noon. Hic.
feels like: bloody hot.
I got up at 06.30 and tried to get my stuff together to leave quietly but THUMP BANG no such luck. I'm sure everyone else in the room wanted to smother me. I got the bus out to the terracotta warriors and had hoped to get there early enough to beat the crowds, but I should know by now that there is no way to beat the crowds. Chinese tourists like to get there early too, damm them. I had to wait for the staff to beligerently scuff across the plaza to come and rent me an audio guide, but immediately regretted it because the audio guide was horrible. "I will break the information down in exactly the same way each time. First, I will tell you how many parts there are to this section of commentary. Second, I will tell you many dull statistics involving square metres. Third, I will make you want to bite your own ears off with my incessant high-pitched whine and peculiar mangling of English."
I liked the labels in the museum that went along the lines of, "we turned to the guidelines of the Communist Party to inspire our work and dilligently complete our endeavors". I love communist signage, but the new industrial China's signs are pretty groovy too. Outside the museum, this was written on the wall: "terra cotta warriors international plaza, according to configuration all kinds of cermocial items linked with new creative industries, become a morden public culture - tour pooling place, froming pure culture and history visiting enpand to Assembly traveling service, showing, shoping, consuming and so on this whole industries chain and connect industrial morden practice travling industries item."
Well, indeed.
I liked the terracotta warriors, they're all different when you look at them closely. So far only about half of them have been excavated and the rest remain a fiendish pottery jigsaw. Outside I got talking to an American high school teacher who did a not too shabby impression of a Scottish accent, so we ate lunch together and walked around the nearby tomb of dead emperor.
Back in Xi'an, I caught the train to Beijing and hopefully walked up and down the train in search of company. This time I'd caught the Z train (nicer than the T trains) but once again, there were no tourists to be found and the people in my compartment didn't speak English and looked utterly terrified of me. Le sigh.
looks like: thousands of terracotta warriors.
smells like: thousands of terracotta warriors (a bit like the art room at school, an old clayish kind of smell, but without the aroma of teenage armpits).
sounds like: an incredibly nasal, whiny, audio guide that I wanted to stomp on.
tastes like: beer at noon. Hic.
feels like: bloody hot.
I got up at 06.30 and tried to get my stuff together to leave quietly but THUMP BANG no such luck. I'm sure everyone else in the room wanted to smother me. I got the bus out to the terracotta warriors and had hoped to get there early enough to beat the crowds, but I should know by now that there is no way to beat the crowds. Chinese tourists like to get there early too, damm them. I had to wait for the staff to beligerently scuff across the plaza to come and rent me an audio guide, but immediately regretted it because the audio guide was horrible. "I will break the information down in exactly the same way each time. First, I will tell you how many parts there are to this section of commentary. Second, I will tell you many dull statistics involving square metres. Third, I will make you want to bite your own ears off with my incessant high-pitched whine and peculiar mangling of English."
I liked the labels in the museum that went along the lines of, "we turned to the guidelines of the Communist Party to inspire our work and dilligently complete our endeavors". I love communist signage, but the new industrial China's signs are pretty groovy too. Outside the museum, this was written on the wall: "terra cotta warriors international plaza, according to configuration all kinds of cermocial items linked with new creative industries, become a morden public culture - tour pooling place, froming pure culture and history visiting enpand to Assembly traveling service, showing, shoping, consuming and so on this whole industries chain and connect industrial morden practice travling industries item."
Well, indeed.
I liked the terracotta warriors, they're all different when you look at them closely. So far only about half of them have been excavated and the rest remain a fiendish pottery jigsaw. Outside I got talking to an American high school teacher who did a not too shabby impression of a Scottish accent, so we ate lunch together and walked around the nearby tomb of dead emperor.
Back in Xi'an, I caught the train to Beijing and hopefully walked up and down the train in search of company. This time I'd caught the Z train (nicer than the T trains) but once again, there were no tourists to be found and the people in my compartment didn't speak English and looked utterly terrified of me. Le sigh.
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