My husband John and I took a joint
three week business trip to China in April and May
this year. We went to the Sun China Engineering and Research Institute on
the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing. I was there to recruit participants
for the SEED Engineering mentoring program and John was there to talk with the
Engineering staff about Sun’s ARCs (Architectural Review Committees).
On one of the weekends, we flew to Xian to see the terra cotta warriors.
We made the mistake of going during the Chinese Labor holiday so it was
very very crowded. The archaeological site is an hour’s drive from the city of
Xian. Xian has some lovely old buildings and a big city wall. The night before
we went to see the site, we walked through the hot streets of Xian.
The city park was full of teens and little kids roller skating. The
Science and Technology museum was closed but we could see painted figures on the
windows: a local version of
NASA’s Pioneer space plaque. The differences were that the figures on the
window in Xian wore underwear and were Chinese in facial feature.
Outside of the city, the countryside has scattered brick houses and walls with
many neat piles of sticks, tiles, and bricks around. Some of the walls and
shacks are dry-laid brick, others use mortar. There are tiny towns with small fruit
tree orchards and grain fields between. Brick outhouses stand between the road and
the homes. All the space is thoroughly used with old and new jumbled together.
You can see the stacks of what looks like a nuclear power plant past the farms
and muledrawn cart and bicycles on the road. As we drove closer to the Qin Army Vaults,
there were factories, some with rows of terra cotta warriors for sale in front.
We spent about three hours visiting the 2000-year-old
tomb itself. We mostly had to squeeze around the tours because the tour guides
would take up a position in front of their group at the rail over the pit and talk
for a very very long time. This meant that no one else could see what was below.
There are four buildings: 3 covered pits and one museum. Visitors get from one to
another using a credit-card-like ticket (from Xian Typical Brother Industries Co., Ltd.).
The pit earth is yellow brown and seeing the clay faces and bodies standing or lying on
top in their orderly rows is awesome. The bodies are strangely perportioned: the
trunks seem too long and the legs too short on the men. The horses have full size heads
and 3/4 size bodies and no tails. On the warriors, there are slight facial differences
from man to man, particularly when comparing the rarer figures and officers.
The museum room displaying the two small bronze chariots was absolutely packed with
people around the central glass cases but as usual in China everyone
seemed calm and good tempered. There was little elbowing and grouching. Kids were
protected from the crowd and everyone looked to be enjoying themselves even in the hot airless crush. Most of the tourists at the site seemed to be Chinese nationals rather
than foreign tourists. It was like visiting Washington DC where Americans go to be
proud of their heritage rather than just gawk at the sights.
John and I knew before the trip that we wanted to buy a full-size terra cotta warrior
copy while we were in China. I have wanted one for my garden ever since my Mother
visited China for the first time ten years ago. We had gone shopping at http://www.terracottawarriors.com/
so we knew what was available in the USA. Bargaining in China seems as much
interactive theater as
commerce. It took four hours at two different factories to make a deal everyone
liked. We tore up two sets of contracts along the way as part of the discussions
of what, where, how much, and how to pay. We had some advantage because the
http://www.terracottawarriors.com/
web site is blocked from viewing in China so the Xian salesmen did not know their
competition’s prices. After very hard bargaining, we bought two figures in dark
grey clay – like this original:
kneeling archer. One archer is for us and the other for my parents.
Last week, I got email from the Xian shipping company that two boxes are coming
in. Our warriors are in Los Angeles now, headed for Oakland, California. We will
borrow a truck and some hefty friends to pick them up when they arrive.
KatysBlog 