An archaeologist's dream

What an incredible sight! Today we visited the Terracotta Army about an hour away from Xi'an. I was very proud that we managed to get there ourselves based on TripAdvisor reviews and recommendations alone. That in itself felt like such an achievement. We entered pit one when we arrived which was where the site was discovered by farmers digging a well in the 70's. The scale of the hall took you aback and the rows upon rows of hand carved figures staring up at you was so impressive. There is 6000 soldiers and horses in this one site and only 2000 have been uncovered and restored. Seeing the fresh sections that had only just been exposed we caught a glimpse at the challenge they face trying to piece together these broken and worn down figures. This made the site even more phenomenal that not only were these statues hand made once but they have also been hand made again by the current archaeologists. There are two other pits of soldiers as well. One is equally as big but has little work to yet be done on excavating this section yet. It's amazing to think we could return in 50 years time and the whole site would be completely different. We did stop at one point to have a coffee and as a lovely treat were shown the traditional tea making of China and allowed to sample three different teas. This made the expensive coffee far more worth while! Overall a pretty great day indeed.Read more