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23 June 2015 23 June Holiday Highlights Sichuan and the Tibetan Plateau 6 ––– 23 June 2015 Guides: Roy Atkins, Philip He andandand Parus YaYaYangYa ngngng Guests: Jean Brown, Kathy Hilton, Pauline Pothecary, Jane AAtkins,tkins, Lyn and David Maslin, Tony DanburyDanbury,, Alison Cawley and John SScotford,cotford, Lynn and Steve OsbornOsborneeee,, AnAnAndreaAn drea and David King Day 111:1::: With all our flights on time we arrive in Xi’an at around 6pm, where we are met by Philip, our tour organiser and guide. Travelling to our hotel in the middle of Xi’an we watch the world go by astonished by all the things going on outside! It is a big city with a population comparable to central London and has a huge number of high-rise flats but arranged in blocks so that you get a cluster of them here then another cluster some distance away of a different design. It is very busy with trucks and cars and tuc-tucs and bicycles and loads of motorbikes and vesper mopeds. We are amazed to see an Ikea amongst all the Chinese shops! We look out for our first birds and we're surprised that they are almost all familiar from Europe - Magpie, Barn Swallow, Kestrel, a couple of Cattle Egrets in a field and Common Swifts. Philip tells us about the city and also fills us in on some Chinese history and talks about the coming trip. He says it is a great itinerary as it includes lots of cultural interest as well as great wildlife. He is a wealth of information and happy to answer all kinds of questions about China and all the recent changes that have happened. We are amazed by the huge variety of clothing being worn from old traditional looking styles to very modern western styles. Our hotel looks straight out at the famous Bell Tower - a superb looking building with Common Swifts diving and screeching around the eaves! After settling in we head out to a nearby restaurant for our evening meal and the tower is all lit up red and green with the swifts just as active in the artificial light. Our evening meal is absolutely delicious - assuming you like Chinese food! One dish after another is brought to the table and placed on a huge ‘lazy Susan’ so everyone can share. Philip explains what is in each dish and also talks about customs such as tapping the table as a thank you when someone serves you tea. We have chop-stick lessons from Jane and dig in, enjoying the wonderful variety of flavours with warnings going out if we find something particularly spicy! After a day of travelling many are tired and after the meal head straight to bed but Philip explains that the Muslim Quarter is just a short walk away and so a few of us decide to have a look at this famous part of Xi’an. This proves astonishing with a fabulous street market and incredibly exciting atmosphere like something out of a film!! As well as colourful advertisements lit up all down the roads, the stalls are incredible with all kinds of things on sale. There are lots of food stalls - with various burgers, kebab-like meat on sticks, soup, noodles, whole crabs and small octopuses deep fried on a stick, pigs trotters and lots of sweets. There is a rather nice looking yellow syrupy cake and a type of sweet, flat crunchy stuff a little like toffee but different flavours and we can see how they make this - first stretching the mixture by hooking it over a hook on the wall then pulling and stretching it right across the road before throwing a loop back over the hook and doing it again and again. Then they place this on a surface and two guys whack it with big mallets to flatten it. There are lots of other sweet things you could choose - fudge, sticky balls, fried bananas and what look like small pancakes. One stall has crickets for sale in tiny cages all singing like crazy and another sells kites - long lines of them on a single string with a kite every couple of feet and this is fed out allowing it to rise incredibly high almost vanishing from view!! It is fabulous just to be here but it is getting late and it has been a very long day so we decide that perhaps we really ought to head to bed. Day 222:2 Today is Terracotta Warriors day! Breakfast is astonishing with a wide variety of different kinds of food on offer from boiled eggs and omelette, baked beans and bacon, to soup and noodles, sushi and a whole variety of stir fried vegetables more typical of a Chinese breakfast. There are croissants, tea and coffee and cakes and fruit and cereal and more! Well fed we have a bit of a way to travel to get to the Terracotta Warriors so we gather at the bus then enjoy the journey through the city. It is fascinating watching what is going on as we drive through. The parks look very nice and are full of people involved in various activities from Tai Chi or jogging to badminton and dancing, often in groups! Some guys are using a big whip to keep a top spinning, a loud crack of the whip each time they use it. We spot Barn and Red-rumped Swallows, lots more Common Swifts, a Kestrel, Chinese Bulbuls and a couple of Azure-winged Magpies. Tree Sparrows are everywhere and seem to have taken over the role of House Sparrow here nesting in all the buildings! We pick up Kevin, our guide to the Terracotta Warriors, and he tells us a bit about the history and points out the big mound over to our left - the burial chamber of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who conquered all the other warring states of China and hence united China in 221BC becoming the first Emperor of China. It was he who ordered the making of the Terracotta Warriors to be his army in the afterlife. The tomb looks like a small isolated hill covered in trees and looks surprisingly natural! He had a huge army but after uniting the states of China used them for public works including the unification of diverse state walls into a single Great Wall of China and a massive new national road system, as well as the city-sized mausoleum guarded by the life-sized Terracotta Army. He ruled until his death in 210 BC after a futile search for an elixir of immortality We arrive at the enormous car park to find a White Wagtail wandering between the cars as they do in UK - but this looks very different being the alboides race with small white patch on a dark head and a black back. We walk through a park- like area with trees and lawns to get to the entrance. At last we have a chance to look at a few birds even though we are meant to be getting to the entrance before it gets too busy. We find Grey-capped Greenfinch, lots of White-cheeked Starlings, Brown-breasted Bulbul, Spotted Dove and Long-tailed Shrike. Tree Sparrows are everywhere and we get great views of Azure-winged Magpie - poor Kevin has a job keeping us moving! We arrive at the entrance and the birds are forgotten as we enter this enormous building and stare in astonishment at the sight before us. We have all seen photos of this room. We all knew what to expect. But seeing it for real is incredible - the sheer scale of the place is jaw-dropping. Even though the vast majority of the warriors are still buried there are enough that have been put back together and stood in the trenches before us to create an impressive sight indeed with row after row standing to attention in the trenches - horses too. The trenches are deep and filled with row after row of them and each is the size of a man or perhaps slightly bigger. They are not just life size but very accurately dressed in armour of the style of the day and each warrior is an individual with its own individual face with finely modelled features. There are horses too and while the first many rows are all stood facing the front, further back they deteriorate into piles of rubble. This is of course what they were all like when first discovered back in 1974 by farmers digging a well - but many have been painstakingly pieced back together and now are standing proud once more. The process is far from over and we can see a team of students working hard on the next warriors and horses. In places some are loosely put together and held with straps, often with their legs and heads on the floor beside them. Others are almost complete and the gaps have been refilled. But it is the scale of the place that astonishes and the sheer number of warriors and the understanding that there are many more still buried under the soil - and this is only one of the halls! Estimates from 2007 suggest the three pits containing the Terracotta Army hold more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which still remain buried. We take a crazy number of photos as we walk round then head round to the shop/visitor centre and watch a short video that explains some of the background. We head to the third covered area where we see a much smaller number of warriors and horsemen with many chieftains before finally going to the second area where there is much more variety.
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