Day 5: Terracotta Amazingness!!!

Another life changing activity. We visited the Terracotta Soldiers today....

Well we first went to the official factory where they reproduce the warriors. Yet another way for them to try to get our monies. :( But it was still fun at the start to see the process).

 They would stack all the soldiers together in a kiln, way tight and awesome looking.

So after the shop/factory, we headed to go see the real thing and when we go there... wow. Amazing!

 The place was huge! This is equivalent to two football fields and there were still locations they haven't unearthed yet!

 Oh yeah, front row!

All of these soldiers were actually re-pieced together. They were originally destroyed by the same craftsmen that were forced to create them. So each had to be put together like a huge jigsaw puzzle.

 They actually found the soldiers by accident. They new that they were made once but were never rediscovered mainly because the emperor that commissioned these also had the creators killed but thankfully a few got away and later returned to destroy their work and promptly forgetting everything about them.

 The soldiers were found by a farmer just trying to dig a well. At this location.

 So this is how they found the soldiers. All in pieces.

 There were three locations, The footsoldiers (which were the first set of pictures), the generals seen above and the third location was of the chariot drivers and seated archers.

 Also, all of the soldiers were painted completely and only after they were unearthed when their paint started to fade. You can see a little of what was left of this archer's painting on his armor above.

 It's like some war zone happened or a zombie attack!

 The soldiers were set aisles with wood logs over them. You can see a little of that above.

So after we finished visiting the Terracotta Soldiers. We headed to a quite unique dinner and show. We were served every kind of dumpling you can imagine and more. Each was very unique and many of them were formed after what was put inside them. For example below is cabbage and pork filled dumplings:

 Can't remember what all of these are but the one on the left is Duck :)

 Do you see the fish?

After that amazing meal, we were entertained with yet another opera, but this one was Amazing! The instruments were better, the music actually had an understandable score and the dancing was superb.

 The costumes were very fancy as well.

 Here is a video of one of the performances. It was with a guy who was using a horn you normally would only use to charm a snake but than his act turned comical when he continued to squeak like his instrument!

the video isn't working :(

here are some dumplings instead.

 Maybe, I'll upload the video to facebook later. Till then, see ya tomorrow!

Adventure is out there!