西安 2

Today - 22522 steps (15.7km)

今天的行程排得满满的，好在咱们的路程不远。

There are many history lessons for today's tour. Like our tour guide 小刘 says, "when in Xi'an on guided tours, it's 七分听，三分看.”So we learn more by listening to the guides ..... Here we go， on a long day‘s program in red hot summer in Xi'an。

 We eat so much of the 椒盐 walnuts

First off a visit to the Banpo site -  a site in Xi'an (its old name was Chang An 长安）where human remains were already in existence some 6000 years ago. 长安 means ALWAYS PEACEFUL and 西安 means The City to the west of Beijing is always peaceful

This is apparently, the actual site where the "Banpo" 半坡 people were found and excavated. These people already knew how to build houses, hunt, plant, make tools, worship etc. I wonder if these people were the earliest civilization in Chang An.  

Next we visit this Surname Culture Museum which gives us some understanding how our surnames were derived and how popular are our surnames in China in terms of ranking.

We take a few hilarious snapshots to amuse ourselves

Next we proceed to visit 骊山 and to reach to the top of the hill quickly and painlessly we use the cable car or in China they call it 素道。

View of 华清池. It was used as Chiang Kai Shek's base in 西安 during his time of fighting the Japanese invaders in 1936. He was later captured up in 骊山 by the Communists who detested him because he did not want to cooperate with them to fight the Japs in a united front. 

 She is worried about height

Our pretty tour guide

Our tour of 骊山 is all a bit of a blur. So many things are happening so fast we do not have time to absorb everything i.e. the history, the sights, the implications. We feel like we are herded like little chooks running around without heads. aiyah!

If one struggles and strains one's eyes one can vaguely see a hill in the background. This is supposed to be the 秦黄帝陵。

We did not get to visit the real 秦黄帝陵 but we did get to see the FAKE (replica). This is a model of the real tomb city and how they did it was they used some sort of sonar to detect the topography of the site and then re-created the interpretations. 我也不知道？？

 The highlight of the tour is a visit to the must see - The Terracotta Warriors 兵马俑

These are real photos shot on site .... to amazing details these figurines were created by craftsmen of old. Unfortunately for them they had to be executed after making these warriors.

 More photos 。。。。 more photos

By the time we get to this museum we just keep snapping photos and videos without thinking how enormous the find was and so on.... we just do not have the time to think!

 More of the same 。。。。

 

These are the more recent finds wherein the archaeologists were also able to preserve the colors painted on the terracotta

 This picture shows the 兵马俑坑 is about 1.5 km east of the Emperor's Tomb

It's a long day and we are finished. Not enough time to see everything and digest the info. By the time we get back to DaysInn it is already 8.30pm and we only get to spend 2 hours at 兵马俑. Oh well .....