Terracotta Warriors

We have been in Xian for 2 days and have really enjoyed the city. The highlight was seeing the terra cotta warriors. The sheer size and scope of Emperor Qin's ego is incredible given that he had 720,000 people working over a 40 year time span to create his tomb for the afterlife. The tomb included these warriors, bronze chariots, deer bones for good luck in upcoming battles and weapons for those battles as well. He wanted to remain emperor in the afterlife so he wanted to be as equipped as possible, should the need for an army arise. It is really amazing to see hundreds of life sized warriors, each with a different face as each face was done by hand, lined up as if in battle.

Tomorrow we are off to Chengdu. We are scheduled to see the pandas (the highlight for me of this first week of travel). Stay tuned... hopefully there will be a picture of me holding a panda posted tomorrow!

Michelle