Terrific Terrarcotta

Yesterday: Terracotta warriors! Awesome! What a huge undertaking! The pictures won't do this justice. All of the warriors and horses were broken and burned by another emperor in revenge. So any of the figures that you see in pictures have been reconstructed. A giant jigsaw puzzle!

We also stopped at a local farmer's home. They are an older couple, 60ish. Live with their 2 sons and dau-in-law. They chose to dig into the hillside behind their home and create semi-subterranean rooms - one bedroom, a storage room, and a utility room. The bed is made out of mud/plaster with a chamber underneath for a fire which keeps the bed nice and toasty in the winter. The fire vents to the outside. All very nice and neat.

Xi'an also is foggy and hazy. But, then all of the towns we have been to so far are foggy and hazy. In Beijing is was "dust from the Gobi desert", in Chongqing is was "steam rising from the confluence of 2 rivers in town", in Xi'an it's "dusty". If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck - isn't that how the saying goes? It looks like pollution to me.

So far, Xi'an has been more interesting in terms of the local flavor. More variation on the local apartment architecture; trees all over the city, things like that.

Ok, gotta go catch my bus for the airport. We fly to Shanghai.