The Eighth Wonder of the World...Thats What She Said

The beginning of this blog should really start where we left off last night. So we ended up going to the bar last night and making friends with some of the local people from Xi'an. One of the guys there got really drunk and now me and him are brothers. It was really crazy cause the people we met knew the owners of the bar and there were only like 10 people in there so we basically had the place to ourselves. Also there was a band that was really good. They did a bunch of cover songs of like the Red Hot Chili Peppers song hump de bump but the singer sang in chinese and he was really good. His voice was really pure and you would have loved it. So the band would play for like 15 minutes at a time and then just chill cause it was so low key and the drunk people would just on stage and grab this other mic that wasnt turned on and sing into it which was really funny. But after we made friends with the drunk people they insisted that me and gordon go up on stage and sing a song. It was ridiculous how pressuring they were about it, we literally were pushed up on stage and forced to sing. Gordon ended up climbing behind the drumb set and they handed me the mic that actually worked. It was so embarrassing for me because I dont know all the words to any songs except like the Avett Brothers which they definitely didnt know. So the band started playing sweet home alabama and Gordon who actually plays drums killed it. They were loving it all until it was my time to sing and I have no clue how that song goes except the chorus. So Max jumps up on stage and starts free styling the verses and I would just come in with the chorus. It was really funny and I wish that someone would have had a camera. So the rest of the night we just chilled and hung out with the crazy drunk Xi'an people. Dont worry because we drank a few but didnt get out of control.

The next day started at the butt crack of dawn aka 8 am so that we could get a jump on the other tourists at the Terra Cotta Warriors museum. So we woke up and had a little breakfast wrap from a local vender that has a little bike with a cooking oven on the back. She was a really old lady and Max told us she was deaf, but she was a great cook. She made these flour tortillas by just putting like a pancake mix on the flat stove and using this cool tool she had to flatten it out in a perfect circle. Then she cracked an egg out on top of the tortilla and used the tool again to spread the egg all over the tortilla. She would flip the tortilla to cook the egg and then paint a chili paste on the tortilla shell before adding the fillings of like crispy wavy chip type things with some diced green onions. The wrap was really good and made for a great breakfast. we ate those waiting for the driver to come and take us out to the country to the museum of the terra cotta warriors.

When we got to the museum of the terra cotta warriors we were able to get half price tickets for showing we are students. Also we were able to get a tour guide that spoke english, even though she had a pretty brutal accent that was tough to understand even in english. It was pretty funny though because I didn't have my school ID, but lucky for me they don't know what schools are what so I just showed them my drivers license and they thought it was a school ID. So the museum was really cool and I was able to take tons of pictures. For those who dont know, cause I didnt, Terra Cotta is just a type of clay. So the people are just clay warriors. It was really amazing though. They have found hundreds of thousands of these 6ft tall clay warriors in 4 different pits that were underground. The testing on the soil and erosion dates them back to the Qin dynasty which is the first emperor of China in 221BCE. Apparently this guy Qin was a really ugly short guy was not very popular in his province, but then he decides to unify all of China by getting a universal language and currency. This made him from the ugly guy no one cares about to the biggest boss of the country, and he then got whatever he wanted and all the people of China were really willing to work for him. So he decides it would be cool to build an army of these clay warriors to put in an underground city to protect his soul after he dies and is buried underground. So to accomplish this he pulls all the artists of the country out to this farmland to build these warriors, but in order to keep this burial ground a secret he kills all the artists after they finish. Now there are some unfinished warriors so they think that the project was never completely finished, but there are hundreds of thousands of warriors built in a 40 year period so the project itself was a pretty big success. Each warrior was hand made and had its own weapon. Each warrior is different than any of the others also, each literally has a different face, and different armor, and different feet. Their weapons were made of wood or bamboo besides like the metal head, so the weapons eroded, but each warriors hand is closed where the weapon was. Recently they have actually discovered records of chrome plating, which was only invented by by the Germans in the 1920's, over 2000 years later. So the craziest part about these people is that they were a complete secret. When the emperor Qin died the dynasty was overthrown 2 years later and some of the warriors were found and destroyed, but the emperor killed all the people that built the warriors so that it was a complete secret and not even found until 1974!!! It was a freak accident it was found in the first place. A farmer stumbled upon it while digging a well. Now he's super rich and has a Chinese book and English book about the warriors. We actually got to see him in the gift shop signing every book sold. It blows my mind that these artifacts that are over 2000 years old were just found in 1974. Understandably one of the first things our tour guide told us was that these terra cotta warriors are considered by many archeologists as the 8th wonder of the world.

After the terra cotta warriors we went to a market place to eat lunch and shop for some souvenirs. The market was a long skinny road with shops on either side all selling pretty much the same trinkets and you haggle with the shop keepers on pretty much everything they have. As you walk deeper into the streets and more towards the middle of the market the venders get very pushy with trying to sell things. You really get harassed even if you look at something. Its funny at first but then one of those things that are really annoying because they think that if you even look at something or stop to look at something that you are going to buy it, and they spend so much time haggling that they think when you leave your just haggling. It sucks because you feel bad having to be a jerk and walk away while they're still talking, but as you walk away their price miraculously drops. As I looked at a watch today I decided I didnt have enough money to buy anything else, but just walking away was not an option for this girl working the shop. She started the price at 60 yuan which would be about $10, and as I walked away not wanting to buy the watch, or anything at all, she could suddenly sell it for 50, 40, 30, no 20 but thats my final offer. It probably would have been easier for me to just buy the watch for what would now cost me like $3, but not having much money in my wallet at the time left me walking away with her basically yelling at me, "final offer 20!"

So we had some lunch in the market eating just a casual meal of like a couple dishes here and there as we walked through the market, just repeating some of our favorite things we had before. So now that we were done with lunch and shopping we went back to the hotel to relax for a little bit and get off our feet. Max's dad had the idea then that we should see the Xi'an city walls which the entrance is right near our hotel. Now this was really cool because touring the Xi'an city walls means riding a bike across the 10 mile 5 story high wall that surrounds the city. The walls were like something you would expect to see in a midevil castle because they had little holes for archers on the outer edge, a smaller side on the inner edge. The view from on top of the wall was amazing. We had perfect views of the skyline as well as a birds eye view of some of the surrounding parks and buildings. Because it was so late when we did this there were not many people up there and a lot of people were in the parks. While we were up there I took a video with my camera and you will hopefully be able to just follow this link to watch it on the chinese version of youtube. I cant actually post it on youtube because just like facebook, youtube is blocked. So Max is trying to hook up the video.

After our 10 mile bike ride around the city it was getting dark and we were all dead tired from a very long day. We went back to the hotel and showered to get ready for bed. I began writing this and around 10 Max was getting hungry again, but nobody else really was, so Max and I went to KFC down the street. He has been insisting that we try the KFC here because he thinks it is so much different. The only real differences I noticed were a smaller menu and like one unrecognizable dish was on the combo menu. Other than that the dining area was nicer than usual but the chicken was pretty similar. So we ate our chicken and went back to the hotel. Tomorrow we get to sleep in which is very exciting. We dont have anything particular on our schedule so we are just going to putz around Xi'an taking pictures and chilling until our flight out at 8pm to the Sechuan province. But now its time for me to get some sleep so I look forward to letting you know what we do tomorrow after it happens.


Goodnight
Marty