24 Hours in Xi’an

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a crap traveller. Given the choice of seeing something famous or actually doing something and meeting people, I’d probably choose the latter and just buy a postcard. As an example, I’m probably one of the few people who’ve been to New York City and not seen that big statue… whatever it’s called. Instead I spent my trip building igloos in a park, sliding down snowy hills on baking trays, and hitting the bars of Yonkers. I doubt any of those things are on anyone’s ‘must do’ list for New York.

So when a couple of my friends were coming to stay with me for the Olympics and suggested a trip to Xi’an, I wasn’t really too keen. I was hoping to dissuade them with time limits but the idea of flying came from somewhere and the new plan was to head to Xi’an on a 24 hour whirlwind tour to visit the Terracotta Warriors. At first I was going to give it a miss and let them go alone but I was eventually persuaded and I skeptically went along with the plan.

We’d had a big night the night before and had to get up for an 11am flight. My friend’s alarm clock was still on Australian time though so we ended up getting up two hours earlier than we needed and headed out to the airport very early and very hungover. It worked out well though because our flight had been cancelled and we were able to jump on an earlier one.

We all sort of wandered around aimlessly our first day in Xian. Taking in some markets, a park, loads of food stalls and walked along the inside of the city walls for awhile. I was pretty sleep deprived and sort of operating in zombie mode so can’t say I really took in a lot of what we saw in. We had booked ourselves onto an early tour the next morning to go say g’day to the warriors so learning from our mistakes, we had an early night.

The next day we went on a tour with a couple of other people from our hostel. We were taken to a place that makes giant warrior statues and were kidnapped into a silk place as well. The silk place was sort of funny. It was attempting to look like a factory but the machines were only turned on as we arrived and turned off as we left. Then we were sort of herded into a room with loads of clothes and had a hard time escaping due to the exit being sort of hidden. Do people ever buy things when they’re kidnapped into a store? It must work some of the time.

So after our forced non-shopping spree and a yummy lunch we were finally off to see some Terracotta Warriors. They’re housed in three huge warehouse type things and I have to say that it’s pretty impressive to see. The detail in them really is life like all the way down to individual strands of hair. They’ve each got their own weapons and even the horses are impressive. Loads are smashed and loads more still haven’t even been uncovered but it really is pretty awe-inspiring when you think of all the work that went into creating them. It’s even more mind-boggling when you think about them all being created just to be buried.

Overall I’m glad I went but I still can’t help but I still can’t help but feel guilty for popping into the city just to see a major attraction to check it off my list. Spending 24 hours in Xi’an really didn’t do it justice. It was a fun little escape but I’m not in any rush to do a whirlwind visit again anytime soon.