Terra Cotta Warriors

“Are you a paranoid fanatic who is worried your subjects will not respect you once you’re gone? Then assemble a giant rock army to protect your tomb and rule on into the afterlife!”

And that’s exactly what Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi did. Described as an extremely type A personality, Huangdi accomplished many great feats during his reign such as the beginnings of the Great Wall, the abolishment of feudalism, and to top it off, the unification of China. However, many of these achievements came at a cost and he created many enemies among his citizens after forcing them into labor on his massive construction projects. It has also been said that he burned almost all written texts and buried 460 disapproving critics alive. Therefore, he ordered over 8000 terra cotta soldiers, horses, and carriages be built. However, his massive immobile forces were no match for the disgruntled peasants who lit his tomb on fire shortly after his death, leaving the statues buried and forgotten until 1974. In the Spring of ’74, farmers happened upon this mythical legend after digging for a well. Excavations are still occurring today, 35 years later.

After getting 6” of snow we weren’t quite sure if we would make it out to see the Terra Cotta Army but it warmed up and melted down into a wet slush that we ended up tramping through. With cold soggy feet we finally arrived to check out the museum and three pits. No. 1 is the most impressive with over 6000 baked earth soldiers facing East in formation. No two fighters are the same; different facial expressions, hairstyles and stances make each one unique. We also learned that the soldiers were originally painted in bright colors that have since mostly faded and flaked away.

Jiuzhaigou Valley: The Fairytale World

It was a bizarre and surreal 14 hour bus ride up to the Jiuzhaigou nature reserve as the bus navigated around the epicenter of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.  Over 64,000 people died and thousands are still missing after this 8.0 magnitude tremor shook the province.  Houses and schools still sat in disrepair; bridges and roads in ruins, but people continued to live and rebuild their city as bricks and contorted rebar lay in piles along the street.  We also passed by a clock tower and saw that the time remained 2:28; when the disaster hit. 

But we ascended higher leaving the nightmarish scene behind to find ourselves entering an almost story book landscape.  The river began to turn from a murky mud to a translucent olive green, and the dilapidated buildings were replaced with tiny farming villages dotted along the hillside.  Small crops of corn and cabbage lined up in rows between houses and young boys herded the livestock along the road.  Old men and women with hard earned wrinkles and ruddy cheeks sat on their stair steps watching the world go by.  But it got later in the evening and the charming sights faded away as the cold night started to settle in. 

We arrived in Jiuzhaigou and found it to be much colder than we anticipated.  Water was frozen in the pot holes of the street and we had no heat in our room.  We spent most of the days and night bundled in our two jackets.  Quite a change after only being in sticky South East Asia a couple of weeks ago, but we braved the cold because this is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Jiuzhaigou means "Nine Village Gully" and refers to the nine Tibetan villages that are spread about the reserve.    The Chinese myth behind the creation of the valley says that a jealous demon caused the goddess Wunosemo to drop her magic mirror, a present from her lover, onto the ground and it shattered into the 118 shimmering lakes.  After paying the steep admission fee we take the bus to the top.  We find snow capped mountain peaks standing majestically above pine forest and enchanting lakes that look like aquamarine, sapphire, and jade had been melted together into a lucid pool showing you what lies below.  Streams bend around the autumn colors that blaze in the reflection of the water and join together before cascading down a waterfall.  Walking several miles of trail we occasionally came across Bon prayer flags strung among the trees.   

That’s One Big Buddha

Bags packed we prepare ourselves for the grueling 25 hour smoke and lugee fest that lay ahead of us aboard the hard sleeper train to Chengdu.  I guess we must explain that the "no smoking sign" holds no merit what so ever and since everyone is smoking, everyone develops phlegm, and in the Chinese culture they believe that it is unhealthy to swallow it.  So players start your hacking! However, it has been said that with recent outbreaks of new diseases like SARS and H1N1, people have been a little more restrained on the spitting. The train was over an hour late which made the natives even more restless and queuing quickly dissolved into frenzy as people (holding tickets with assigned seat mind you) try to make their way thru the turn styles. 

But we find our 6 bed bunk and hunker down for awhile.  We attempted our pathetic excuse of Mandarin but our older roommates just found us amusing and intently watched us play a couple games of chess.  In our defense, the Chinese language is extremely difficult.  There are over 20,000 characters in the alphabet, compared to our measly 26.  On top of all of that, there are 5 tones which totally change the meaning of a word.  For example, "ma" depending on how you say it can have 5 different meanings, you could accidently call someone's mother a horse! And for the icing on the cake there are up to 9 different linguistic groups in China.    

Chengdu was more of a base for the next couple days, but most of our time was spent on the outskirts of the city.  We sampled the Sichuan "hot pot" cuisine, which is like a spicy fondu, though it is much more challenging trying to fish the food out with chopsticks.  We also enjoyed a "Sichuan Opera," however it was actually more of a variety show than opera with acrobatics, music, and dancing.  Then we sheepishly laid around for a while, spoiled with a soft bed, which is rare on the Asian continent, and 100's of DVD's at our disposal.   

Not too far from Chengdu is the city of Leshan which holds a really, really big Buddha, 71 m to be precise.  His name is Dafo and he actually holds the title of biggest stone Buddha in the world.  His toenails are bigger than your head!  With such a description one would think that he would not be too hard to find, but somehow we became VERY acquainted with Bus No. 1 in our drawn-out pursuit.    Finally locating something that resembled a ferry pier we bought our ticket and sailed our way out with the other 30 photo op crazed Asian tourist.  They love having their picture taken in front of things and throwing up hand signs.  Though we spent a small fraction of our day admiring this awe inspiring image carved into the red stone cliff we still think it was worth the effort.  So long Bus No. 1!

Abandon Ship!

Although we didn't actually have to abandon our "bamboo" (aka PVC) raft as we cruised down the Li River, we had a few close calls. Our trip began with two other friends from the hostel as we flagged down a bus heading to Yangshuo. From there we caught the short bus, which probably contained as many people as the previous one, to the dock where we negotiated a decent price for a raft down the river.

The boat captain was great, pointing out different rock formation and stopping where we wanted for a photo op.  The latter almost proved dire as we navigated cross the wind to a grotto in the mountain side. The wind started to torque the raft pushing the front corner under water; however, the captain quickly navigated the boat out of the wind and downstream to safety. The striking scenery and giant Karsts are best described by pictures.

Originally we hadn't planned to spend the night in Yangshuo; however, looking back we could easily have spent several nights there. Luckily we chose to spend one night as we didn't arrive to the city until dusk. After our welcome to the hostel,  beer,and a yummy dinner we headed to the Impressions Liu Sanjie show.  The show is comprised of 3000 plus people from five different villages with an impressive light show to accompany them. A Broadway scale production wasn't something we had expected from a small town in rural China. 

We hoped to rent bikes to explore the country side the next morning before we had to catch a train from Guilin to Chengdu; but we were unsuccessful at renting bikes at 6am. Instead we watched sunrise and had a nice breakfast consisting of warm soy-milk and century-egg porridge. I know it sounds disgusting, but it was actually quite tasty just go to show that you should try anything at least once.

You take Picture

After four days of touring Hong Kong we decided to cross the border into mainland China and take an overnight sleeper train from Shenzhen to Guilin. We wanted to travel by hard-sleeper; however, we found out the hard way that purchasing tickets a few hours before a train departs isn't always the best. The only seats available for the train were in the soft sleeper class, which were twice the price but were quite nice.

Whenever we reach a new city we always try to find a map and explore the local area to get our bearings. What we weren't expecting was to be invited to join a game of bad mitten. So, after a few hours of sleep and glasses fogging over, we tested our bad mitten skills. As one could guess, this didn't go too well; however, we all had a great experience and were invited back anytime (we assume that's what they said as we parted ways). We grabbed some yummy dumplings for breakfast and watched groups of people doing their morning exercises, from Tai Chi to line dancing. (We managed to stay out of those)

As we walked around the rivers and lakes taking in the scenery and lovely pagodas we were suddenly ambushed by Chinese in the trees. As strange as it sounds, we seemed to be an added tourist attraction around the lake as several people took our pictures, some discreetly and others not so much. A group of kids ran up to us asking "you take picture", so the "laowai's" (foreigner) obliged, and we even threw up the peace sign which seems to be the Asian photo trademark. We were going to get a picture with our camera, but they disappeared into the trees giggling as quickly as they appeared. We have discovered the Chinese people to be surprisingly nice and extremely, but sincerely, inquisitive of foreigners as you are shamelessly stared at where ever you go.

Halloween unfortunately isn't as widespread in Guilin as it is in the States and other big cities; however, there were a few Halloween decorations and costumes. We didn't dress up as we were too lazy to go shopping for any costumes unlike other Westerns around town. A highlight for many locals was to admire the ridiculously dressed foreigners as they hung out downtown. So we had a couple beers and watched too.

Without any real plan yet for China we broke down and joined one of the flag-led tours through the hostel to Longsheng with some friends we met the night before. The Ping An rice terraces are a highlight of the Guangxi province and although they had been recently harvested, the vista was still quite extraordinary. Though said to be touristier than other terrace locations, you could still catch a glimpse of weathered farmers tending their crops that have been built into and along the mountain side of the Dragon's Backbone. Our tour took us to the village of the long hair where we took-in an "authentic" long hair show. Although touristy, it was neat seeing the actual villagers that only cut their hair once in their lives when they get married. We ended up breaking away from the tour and began to wish we had more time to hike up and down the soil stair cases as it came time to make a mad dash to the bus.