Impressions of Xi'an - Terracotta Warriors and the Huaqing Hot Springs

Xian (known then as Chang-an) was the first capital of a unified China.  The gentleman who founded the city was also the man who fought against, and consolidated in ten short years, what were a group of squabbling kingdoms, creating the first unified kingdom, the kernel of modern China.  His wasn't a dynasty that survived his death (210BC), but that first act of consolidation is now considered seminal, and the country it gave birth to took its name from that of his dynasty - Qin (pronounced Chin).  He took the title Qin Shi Huang (The First Sovereign Emperor of Qin) and is now referred to as the First Emperor: apart from creating a united kingdom he built roads, consolidated the Great Wall, created an administrative structure and gave China the script that lives on to this day.  He created a vast mausoleum that he was eventually buried in and, in death, was guarded by a large army: the Terracotta Warriors.

The burial site is some forty kilometres east of Xian and is now easily accessed by an expressway.

 
After the collapse of the Qin dynasty, parts of the site were ravaged and set afire and then forgotten.  In 1974, amidst a drought, six brothers started digging a well at what they thought was a promising spot below the Lin Mountain.  As unexpected events go, this was a good one. The spot they picked turned out to be the southeastern corner of the site where the Warriors had been buried.  A few feet further east or south and the warriors might have remained buried and the site would have been just another undulation in the Chinese countryside.  There was more to the unexpected turn of events.  The Cultural Revolution was still raging, remember, and archaeologists were not exactly thick on the ground.  Those that remained were likely getting reeducated in revolutionary thought rather than practicing their profession.  As luck would have it, there was an archaeologist in a nearby village called Lintong.  Perhaps he was so far off the beaten track that the Cultural Revolution never caught up with him.  In any event, he came to hear about the broken shards of terracotta, recognized their significance, and moved to protect the site.

 

The death of Mao in 1976 and the changes that followed meant that excavating the site and reconstructing the warriors became a national priority.

Today, visitors enter the site via a large granite paved plaza.  (Granite paving appears to be the landscaping of choice for historical sites in Xian.) Manicured gardens, stands of trees and landscaping mean that the original mound of dirt is a forgotten memory.  Lintong, five kilometres west, is now a bustling town.

Entering Pit 1 of the Warriors' site

Restored Pit 1.  An amazing sight!

  The warriors, each one unique, now stand in proud rows, having lost only their coats of paint and their weapons to the centuries.  The site has been only partly excavated.  The vast majority of the warriors still lie buried, awaiting improvements in archaeological and restoration techniques.  What we see today is a live archaeological site.  The warriors themselves, large ranks going back many rows, are impressive.  Even more impressive is the way the dig has been displayed.  We see how the columns have been excavated, the packed earthen walls that separate the columns, the indentations made by the wooden beams that once provided a roof for the warriors, and much else.

The floors were rammed with earth and paved with bricks.

A sign shows us the spot of that 1974 well.

Parts of three pits have been excavated, and walkways surrounded the pits.  Crowds (almost all Chinese: there were only a handful of foreigners) walked around gaping, photographing, chattering: people were friendly and orderly and there was no pushing and shoving.

Pit 3 was completely different in layout, and was the command centre for the rest of the army.

Yet to be excavated.  Imprints of the fiber mats 

 

that were part of the roof

 

A museum stood off to one side.  The exhibits were well displayed and labeled: originals, replicas, items loaned to, or borrowed from other museums.

A high ranking officer

Cavalryman with his horse

There was a bookshop with the usual coffee table books, postcards and assorted bric-a-brac.  An elderly man flanked by two minders sat in a chair signing books.  He was the man who had dug that well back in 1974.  He signed our book with a flourish: Chinese calligraphy, like Arabic calligraphy is so much more interesting, so much more aesthetic, than the mundane scripts adorning the streets and books of Chennai.

Emerging out, we were greeted by this long kite in the sky

We left the campus with mixed feelings of awe and regret: history usually remembers only tyrants.

 Huaqing hot springs

The way back to Xian took us through Lintong.  Our driver, like all the drivers we met in China, was uncommunicative.  Perhaps, like the rest, he spoke no English.  Perhaps Chinese drivers, unlike their Indian counterparts, prefer silence.  In any event, he pulled into a parking lot in Lintong and silently pointed us down the road.  For some reason: the weather, the topography with undulations and the mountains to our left, the roads themselves, this place reminded me of La Canada Flintridge in distant California.  Perhaps I was just a bit tired.

The Huaqing Hot Springs site is an odd agglomeration.  The hot spring still exists, bubbling into a fountain of sorts, and there were plenty of people splashing the water onto their faces and arms.  There is a rather nice garden and lake.  We posed for pictures, and an excited Chinese gentleman came running up and wanted his photograph taken with us.  So there we were, a Chinese, a Russian and an Indian, arms around each other, smiling under a clear early Chinese summer sky. 

The hot springs bubbling up

 

An excavated site, now enclosed, includes the Tang dynasty baths.  The surrounding walls carried a series of drawing depicting the great love affair of Emperor Xuanzong and his consort Yang Guifei.  As I saw it, the lovers, having overcome assorted obstacles and objections, eventually became swans (it could have been storks) and, together to the very end, flew off to heaven.  Sorry to say, it didn't bring a tear to my eye.  Perhaps I am too cynical for these romantic tales.

 

The crabapple pool

 

The most interesting part of the site was a set of buildings where Chiang Kai Shek had his headquarters in the 1930s.  His office, bedroom and the room where an assassination attempt took place (bullet marks on the wall!) are all well preserved.  Chiang is everywhere referred to by his full title: Generalissimo.  Chiang and Mao were sworn enemies.  The communists defeated Chiang's Kuomintang in the late 1940s to take power, and Chiang fled to Taiwan, taking with him a host of treasures from the Forbidden City.  Chiang was enemy number one, in other words.  Yet here was Chiang, titled, and his history well preserved and far from airbrushed out of existence.  I suppose it was Chinese pragmatism once more: there are plenty of tourists from Taiwan these days and what better way to get their attention than an exhibit featuring the old Generalissimo.  I wonder what Mao would have made of all this.

Airports, and the roads that take you into the city, are not merely gateways.  One's first impressions of a country and a city are coloured by them, and first impressions leave their taint on everything that follows.

Our final hours in China took us past the old city walls, through suburbs, and onto the highway leading to the airport.  The suburbs were striking: a standing army of identikit 20-30 floor apartment blocks, most complete and, as far as we could see, unoccupied.  They looked well planned, with broad access roads, provision for shopping areas and large gardens.  American suburbia, scaled up vertically, lacking nothing but residents.  We had seen something similar in the far outskirts of Beijing and this was perhaps confirmation that at least some of China's recent growth was actually a real estate bubble.

The highway to the airport was as impressive as the one in Beijing and the airport itself had three modern terminals.  The quick efficiency of Beijing was missing, though.  We had to wait a while for the check-in counter to open.  The impatient queue that waited for the counter to open was more India than Singapore, and the time it took for the immigration formalities suggested that while the hardware was in place, the processes and people - the software - had some catching up to do.

Our transit in Hong Kong was further confirmation that China was still a work in progress.  Not that that was any consolation. Anna International Terminal in Chennai and the potholed and dimly lit highway outside confirmed that we cannot take even small pleasure in China's inadequacies.