Xi'an's Terracotta Warriors

Friday 25 May

Yesterday we booked a tour to see Xi'an's famous Terracotta Warriors; it's an all-day tour and quite expensive at £35 each.  We set off in a minibus - some people from our hostel, some from other hostels - all can speak English, as we have a Chinese, English-speaking guide with us. She gets us to introduce ourselves to each other, which is good.  Her Chinese- English accent makes her quite difficult to understand, but she seems nice enough.  She is also tour guide to some people in another minibus, so she has 17 of us to shepherd around today, ensuring we don't get lost - not an easy task

On our minibus are two young men who come from Singapore – and guess what – they are doing much the same trip as us, but in the opposite direction - travelling from Singapore to London, England by train! They are taking a slightly different route from us as they want to avoid the European Football Championship in Poland and the Ukraine. We swop stories and as they will be back in Singapore by the time we get there near the end of July, we will contact them when we arrive and meet up for dinner!

The terracotta warriors are a vast army of soldiers (probably at least 8000, according to wikipedia) made out of hardened clay, representing the conquering armies of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, in the 3^rd century BC.  The vast army, consisting of warriors and horses, were buried with the emperor in his tomb circa 209 - 210 BC; he thought this would ensure that he retained his power in the after-life. The amazing thing is that no-one knew of the existence of the clay army until 1974, when it was discovered by a local farmer, who was drilling a well to find water. After the initial discovery, major archaeological excavations have taken place, unearthing thousands of warriors (most in a damaged, broken condition – at least 2000 have been painstakingly restored), and many of the terracotta horses.

On our visit we are able to see some of the excavation areas, and the upstanding army of about 2000 restored warriors, as well as the broken parts of my warriors not yet restored. What I think is spectacular about the terracotta army is not just what the onlooker can see now, but also the sheer scale of the work undertaken by craftsmen over 2000 years ago, and the fact that this craftsmanship was kept secret, no-one knowing about it's existence until recent years. We are told that the sculptors who made the warriors and horses were all put to death by the Emperor once they had completed their work, so that what they were doing would remain a secret. Quite how we know this now I'm not sure.

After our archaeological tour with our Chinese guide who is difficult to understand, we are taken for a good Chinese lunch. Out comes my little knife and fork, while everyone else shows me up by using chopsticks.

In the afternoon we are taken to another archaeological site, a neolithic village, which is quite interesting, and no doubt fascinating to any archaeologists among us; but I wouldn't have made an effort to go there myself. I would have been quite happy to return to the hostel after lunch.

Back at the hostel Reg tries to book up more train tickets over the internet using his Paypal account, as he's done several times before, but for security reasons Paypal have blocked the payment. Reg emails them to complain; they reply to say they've sorted the problem,but they haven't; they want to phone us at home to check we are bona-fide, but, guess what, Paypal, we're not at home; we're in China.

The internet train-booking site doesn't take visa, so if we can't use Paypal, we have to draw out the money via an ATM cash machine, and pay the money back in at the designated Chinese bank, using a form the train-booking agency have emailed us, and which the hostel have kindly printed off for us. In order to draw out this money, I need to load more money onto my Caxton FX Global Traveller card from my current account debit card. I try to do this, but you cannot load money onto a secondary Caxton card, and my primary card was stolen in Kazakhstan. We notified Caxton at the time, and were able to continue to use the secondary card at ATM cash machines; this is the first time since the primary card was stolen in Kazakhstan that we've had to load the card with more money

I email Caxton about our card-loading problem, and to be fair receive a prompt reply, telling me the problem has been sorted, and I am now able to load my card. To my relief I find I can indeed do this straight away. Well done, Caxton, for your excellent customer service.

We re-email Paypal to say they still haven't sorted our problem, but don't receive a reply.