The amazing Terracotta Warriors兵马俑Bing ma yong

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Sunday, March 17, 2019

After a good nights rest and some breakfast we went to the city wall of Xi’an . The city wall was built over 1,000 years ago to protect the people within the city. The wall is 12 square kilometers which is 10 times the size of the Beijing palace. Guards and archers would stand on the walls fighting off any enemy’s that tried to attack. We got 40 minutes to walk around the wall but, it takes 3 hours to get around the whole thing so we only went about 1/4 of the way. Once we were done walking we got on the bus to drive one hour to the terra cotta soldiers. The terra-cotta soldiers are one of the eight wonders of the world. They were built for the first emperor of China, who united the most kingdoms under his rule. This emperor did so much in his time of ruling he didn’t want to leave control. He ate tablets of pure mercury, thinking it would give him immortality, and that he would rule over China forever. But what he didn’t know is that mercury is highly poisonous if eaten. In fact, the reason he died was because of mercury poisoning. Anyway, before he died, he constructed a large and elaborate tomb for himself, and had the terra-cotta soldiers made so that his great conquests and wars fought and won would always be with him in the after world. He had thousands of these soldiers built, and each one was different and were made from the real soldiers of that time. We walked in all of the excavation rooms and took lots and lots of pictures. After we finished up at the terra-cotta museum, we drove to the train station to catch the overnight train to Beijing.