Once upon a time, Jenessa,
Natalie, and I decided to go pay a visit to the Terracotta Warriors.
Epic, right?
Our journey started
on a Monday evening as we boarded an overnight train to Xi’an, the city where
our warrior friends live.
This is what the train looked like. It wasn’t quite as uncomfortable as
it looks.
We arrived in the
city on Tuesday morning, delirious from lack of sleep and disoriented by our new
surroundings. Thankfully, we reached the place where our hotel was and parked
in one of the MANY Starbucks in the area until we could check in.
A few hours of
naptime later, we explored our block. Our hotel was between the Drum and Bell Towers
(two really big pagodas), which sat next to the Muslim Quarter and lots of shopping.
Which meant that the
rest of the day was spent buying cheap things, eating cool foods, and reveling
in the fact that Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks were so close to us. (I had a
donut for breakfast every morning. BOO-YAH.)
Then, on Wednesday,
WE SAW THEM.
The warriors.
Just in case you were
wondering about it, here is the short Laura-version of their history:
Way back in time,
this 13-year-old Chinese emperor was just minding his own business, listening
to angsty teenage music on his ancient ipod and playing majong on his ancient
Wii, when his parents came in and were all like, “Hey, we’re going to start
building your tomb now. It’s going to be LEGIT.” Then they took all these
people out of prison and made them build a city to be their teenage son’s tomb.
They wanted to make sure that when their son graduated from college and, you know, died,
that he wouldn’t get lonely, so they filled it with statues of warriors and
horses and acrobats and other things.
A long, long time
after that, in 1974, after the emperor got old and died and his whole tomb was
deep underground, a Chinese farmer was building a well and found a decapitated
stone head. It freaked him out so much he turned it over to the authorities,
who bought all his farmland and excavated it. In return, they gave the farmer a
gift shop outside of the excavated mausoleum. Now they are still working on digging it all
up, but they’re afraid to dig out they actual tomb part because it might be booby-rigged with noxious gas.
Anyway, it was all really
cool to look at.
That night we got to
visit the Wild Goose Pagoda, where the most awesome light-up fountain show in
China takes place.
Getting there was a
real ordeal because we had no idea how to navigate Xi’an’s public
transportation system, but we managed to get there and back and passed a goat tied to a stoplight on
the way.
I didn’t get a
picture of the goat. Sorry.
On Thursday, our last
day, we went to an Italian restaurant that was having it’s 5th
anniversary and everything was 50% off.
Which meant we had to
get twice as much delicious food.
Then we visited the
city wall.
And then we did the
last of our shopping in the Muslim Quarter.
Our trip ended with
one last delirious night on the train, made better by a few rounds of Dutch Blitz.
While the trip was
fun, I think all of us would agree that the best part of it was our matching
Chinglish cat shirts.
Lovely Cat Friends.
You wish anying you doses
Life is good and the sky looking scod
My best friend, SO USE.
