Report from Xi'an - terracotta warriors and Tang dynasty performances - Oct 30, 2009

Hello again

Wonders being achieved here with this fast internet connection and no one breathing down one's neck to get onto the computer.

We are now in Xi'an home of the warriors or close to it.

Another nice small city for China (5 million). We are staying in a youth hostel just inside the old city walls. A large old house of three floors build arount several courtyards. As we found in Beijing the people running these places run a spectacular service organising or helping you with anything and everything that you need. This one is a bit bigger than the Beijing one so there is a bit of noise at night from the young things but it has mostly settled down by the time we old codgers need to sleep. Lovely clean room and bathroom and a great vibe to the place. Even reasonablish coffee hah hah!!!

We decided not to take an organised tour out to ther warriors which is the usual way of doing things, having an abhorrence of being in a mob and not being able to control the pace of things ourselves. So we asked the hostel to arrange a car and driver to go only to the warriors and not the factory or the other splended places they want to jam into a day on most tours.

The terracotta warriors in their pits are mind boggling in scale. You could see the warriors all in situ as they would have been placed, only the roof missing which had been burnt and collapsed at some distant time. You look down upon them as you walk around the inside edge of huge hangers that cover the pits. And i mean huge. Some pits are still to be excavated and another was in the process of being so. As they dig out the broken warriors and horses they piece them together at one end of the first big vault/series of pits and this large assemblage stands at ground level - you really quite expect them to head off somewhere. They are quite spookey.

One of the most striking things was in the museum. Two bronze chariots inlaid with gold and silver with four horses all strapped up with yokes and bridles and so on. A cross bow dangles from the front and a small holder of arrows is on the side. Thin bronze strips look like leather reins. An umbrella that can go up and down and swivel half way like a beach umbrella shades the charioteer. They had a working model of it in the museum being demostrated to the amazement of all who crowded around. Some of the spears were chrome plated and came out of the pits still shiney and sharp. Chrome plating was not invented in the west til the 1880s and did not come into use until 1930s - we are talking here about 221BC or thereabouts.

We are anjoying China. It is not as different as India but i think that is partly that i don't have as firm a hold on the culture as it has emerged from history, art, stories, religion and so on. Maybe it is partly the language barrier which keeps you at a surface level. Maybe also that China has suffered an enormous rupture between its past and today. But nevertheless this is an amazing time to be here in China's history - what a transformation is taking palce, and with what energy and dynamism. We also find the Chinese people quite delightful. Very helpful and with a great joie der vivre. There is a great interest in the past and integrating it into the present - making money from it in part - but there is also pride and interest in it. I think John will write more about this so I won't.

Love to you all and hope you are keeping well

Joan (see John's email below)

Hello everyone. Thank you for your various messages they are much appreciated and enjoyed. Apologies for some of the delays in getting back to you. As you'd realise internet access is not always as easy as you'd like - some places are slow, some places the computers are hard to use and some places you just can't get on anyway.

The more you travel in this extraordinary country the more difficult it becomes to convey its layers. The past is everywhere but strangely absent from the present, for example. There is a huge revitalisation of interest in the past, but it is not like India where the past 4000 years is still vividly present in current culture and practice, especially in places like Varanasi and throughout Tamil Nadu. Even so you see the evidence of China's amazing history everywhere and they are at last allowed to take pride in it.

The other night we saw what was presented as a 'Tang Dynasty' show. We expected one of the common tawdry presentations for tourists like the version of Beijing Opera we saw in Beijing - tedious, inept, uninterested - an utter travesty of a great art form. But this was amazing. There were over one hundred actors dancers and musicians in a rather spectacular theatre decorated by large murals of Tang dynasty scenes of court life. It was enthusiastic and skilled. The music was all performed on Tang era instruments. You had the sense that the performance was the product of energy, fun and perhaps historical national pride. It was an attempt to recreate a performance before a Tang emperor (600sAD-900sAD). A jaded or cynical westerner might want to say that it had an element of kitsch or that it was too Hollywood/Bollywood with its gorgeous costumes and extraordinary Tang era court hairdos and spectacular dancing and theatrical effects and lighting. I don't think so, though. The people who created and participated in it were not only very good at what they did but seemed to get great pleasure from doing it.

All great eras are accompanied by a revitalisation of a sense of the culture of their past, aren't they? Shakespeare put Mark Anthony in a doublet - he wasn't interested in some dull recreation of the past but as material for what he wanted to say and do now. There was no ideological gloss in this show. The emperor was presented in all his glory, the court in all its colour and glitz and spectacle. The Chinese, you feel, are at last allowed to be proud of their disastrous, cruel, brilliant past. For me that's an occasion for joy and the show reflected that. Nationalism? I agree, nationalism is appalling, but that's not what I'm talking about here, just one element.

Xian is amazing. Our hostel (Shuyuan $24 night for room with ensuite) is right up against the Ming wall (1500s?). A lot of the architecture we've seen is Ming or imitates Ming style. Other buildings are modern, some of them sleek black cubes, designer stores, department stores. We walked by this and then into the Muslim district behind the main mosque. A labyrinth of souvenir and trinket shops at first, then the true Muslim quarter, like a cleaned up version of Old Delhi or central Hankou. Tinsmiths and noodle makers and dumpling makers and fruit sellers and meat shops along the street. Stacks of truly ugly looking calf's liver on one wooden table with some tripe. A lot of the meat looked pretty good except that, sitting in the open like that we decided not to have the kebabs nearby cooking on little charcoal braziers but went into a dumpling shop instead. Mutton dumplings. Must be the muslim influence. The Chinese will eat anything except cheese. I read somewhere that many Asians have lactose intolerance which would explain that. But they don't eat huge quantities of meat as most meat dishes come with a mix of vegetables and many tables are dominated by purely vegetable dishes. In Shanghai there is even quite a practice of imitation meat or fish made from tofu or gluten etc. We had a superb dish of congealed Duck's blood at Zif's birthday party the other day. The food here has been pretty disappointing so far so I won't say more.

I still haven't mentioned the Terracotta Warriors, a breathtaking sight we went to yesterday. Made around 240-210BC their artistry is ordinary but that isn't what is striking. It is the sheer scale that throws you. Made for one of the most ruthless tyrants in history (there are so many to choose from but Qin Shi Huang takes the cake). He unified China after three centuries of war, built the first Great Wall, unified the currency, simplified and unified the script, unified weights and measures, decreed uniform road widths and axle widths. I could go on. The man was a murderous genius. His army of 2 million was 20% of the population. Millions died building the wall and all his other works during his appalling tyranny. But he stopped incessant war and unified China. Without him the Chinese say, we'd be like Europe. Is that so bad? They seem to think so.

Joan has had some trouble with headaches from Wuhan onward. It lifted a little yesterday in time for the warriors but isn't that flash again today. We are sitting in a vast wangba (internet cafe) with super fast connection and very flash computers and gleaming sparkling granite surfaces all around. There must be over two hundred computers in here and comfortable armchairs. Right next to the western Mosque so if Joan feels well enough we might wander past it for some noodles in the back streets. We leave for Lijiang tomorrow.

Zaijan, John