Right after Beijing,  I took a night train to Xi’an. In China, it is very common to find night trains between main cities, and it is a very convenient way of travelling for many reasons. You do not need to got the airport (normally far away from the city centre), you can sleep reasonable well, you do not need to sacrifize afternoons in going to the airport, and waiting times and so on, as the train departure is in the evening… And it is cheaper, and you save some accomodation nights. 🙂

Any way, I got to Xi’an. You might not know what Xi’an is, but it is one of the ancient capitals of China, and is now hosting one of the most important archeological treasures in the World: The Terracotta Army. This is important not only for the size of this army: more than 6000 thousand soldiers and horses, but also because of the quality of each sculture, and their uniqueness: there are not two equal soldiers. Each one has a different face, so the amount of work needed for this is even bigger.

I wondered what the origin of this army was, and here we meet again with our friend Qin Shi Huang. I wrote about him in the previous post about the Great Wall. He did lots of good things… and he also loved himself too much, apart from being afraid from death. So, as he was soooo great, even his tomb needed to be protected by an army… I guess he realized that maybe such a large army could not be a real one, so he created a fake one.

This army was found in the 60’s by some farmers from this area, and the excavation works are still on going in the three different buildings covering this amazing finding. It can be fully visited and lies a couple of kilometres from the actual tomb of the Emperor they are protecting…

Call me stupid if you want, but I would not be surprised if this is just a small part of the army..