no stampeding!
x'ian's a funny place. given that the primary attractions for travellers are the historic delights befitting an ancient imperial city and the small matter of a centuries old terracotta warforce lurking in the ground nearby we had expected somewhere calm and serene, a contemplative base from which to survey the remnants of times past. the whiteknuckle cab ride from the airport, hurtling down expressways oblivious of other traffic and pedestrians as our slightly nuts cabbie casually dangled a lit cigarette from his lips, should have given us a clue that presumption woud not match reality; the flashing neon lights, starting on top of the ancient tang dynasty city walls and continuing throughout the old city, all designer boutiques and kfcs, served to reinforce that. following a brief wander around a darkness totally violated by honking cars, flashing golden arches and europop blaring out of seedy karaoke bars it was with confusion in our minds that we went to bed, wondering about a bizarre city which seemed to have ravenously embraced modernity in an attempt to displace its historic past. here in one of the citadels of old china its replacement was rising up to take its place.we dragged ourselves out of our hostel at around 8am to get onto an early bus to the terracotta army. the site is vast, carefully landscaped to provide venues for various little stalls as well as (yet another) kfc and a subway which line the long walk (no stampeding) up smooth concrete concourses towards the pits housing the clay figurines. i had some concerns as to how this would work as an attraction, namely as once you had walked in and had the initial moment of awe looking down into the pit filled with statues, you were left with little else. this, unfortunately, was very much the case; following a bad start when we realised that the clay citizens of pit 2 were on tour leaving behind a vacant empty bowl of little interest we strode hopefully into pit 1 to have a moment of genuine awe as we were confronted by thousands of stern faces which fizzled out fairly rapidly. it did not help that the layout of the whole experience is rather weak; it looks as though they have only excavated about a quarter of the pit which, given it was discovered in 1974, is remarkably slow work, even by archaeological standards which, admittedly, revel in tardiness. this led to a situation where the back two thirds of the vast pit were actually largely empty, creating in turn a large blank space which undermined and to an extent dominated the packed front section of the pit. considerably more effort appears to have been spent on creating a surrounding environment designed to efficiently part visitors from their money then presenting this astounding find and the entire experience suffers as a consequence.
all in all therefore a worthwhile but slightly underwhelming day; on a longer holiday the detour to x'ian is definitely worth it but to fly so far for a day just to glimpse the terracotta army seemed in retrospect like a tourist box ticking exercise. on a questionable air sichuan flight at the moment flying into chengdu where hopefully the giant pandas will be truer to form.
posted by bicrom @ 9:00 pm
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