"Xi'An - The Terracotta Army Barracks are... " a Xi'an Travel Page by shivan

Xi'An is a large town located in the Shaanxi region, central China, and counts 7 million inhabitants.

Xi'An is the ancient capital of the Chinese empire, and for these reasons many monumental tombs are present here.

An harsh controversy popped out in the seventies when, I'm dealing with alternative archeology now, an archeologist calculated the presence of ancient monuments in the Shaanxi area, ask me how he did it if you're curious, but the chinese government gave no permission to explore.

Satellite investigations evidenced the presence of what are called "white pyramids" exactly where the professor said they must be.

Now, travelling to the Terracotta Army site, I saw many tombs of ancient emperors that have the shape of a short pyramid. I actually don't know if what I saw is what that professor discovered but for sure there is so much history to explore...

The ancient chinese empire dates back to millennia b.C. and all this makes this area so interesting.

Shaanxi, and Xi'an in particular anyway are well known all over the world for the incredible Terracotta Army.

A bit of recent history.
As I said in my China page, most of China is still rural, and the Shaanxi area makes no exception to this.

Well, a farmer was working on his wheatfield and TONK! he hit something unusual.

Digging and digging he found the statue of an angry warrior with a large bump in the head.

Enlarging the hole he found many friends of that warrior. He immediately informed the authorities.
Doing this, he made a great gift to humanity but I think a bad deal for himself.

The whole area has been confiscated, and the poor farmer is now an attraction himself of the Terracotta Army Museum, that has been erected exactly where excavations took place. Works still go on because the presence of more statues has been ascertained.

He is still there, so old and almost blind, sitting all the day at the market signing booklet for tourists.

Chinese faces' expressions are diffcult to interpret but I felt he is not so happy about is current condition, and that was not a good feeling at all.