An entire underground army, built to protect Emperor Qin She Huang in his afterlife (back in 200 AD).
We hired a guide to help all of us (even the adults) understand all that we were seeing and he was amazing. Matt is a bit of a Chinese history junkie, but this guide had all the facts. It was such a treat to hear from him, and he did a great job engaging the kids too.
This army is so impressive, each warrior unique - facial features, shoes, armor, everything.
And if his guided explanations of everything we were seeing wasn't enough, he took us to a nearby factory where they make warrior replicas, and each kid got to make their own, with locally harvested clay and it was so cool.
This was the perfect way to cement (ha!) all that we had learned and the kids came home with their hand-made replicas, talking warrior talk the entire way!
Late afternoon we headed to the Drum Tower. It is beautiful!
We asked the kids to give us their "I'm so tired of seeing tourist-y sights" faces :)
You could title this "Authenticity: Bored of Chinese history at the Drum Tower in Xian"
We attacked the boredom with noodles for dinner...
and kites to fly in a windy plaza.
The kids ran and played and the air crisped up (after a hot hot day) and this was just a sweet moment in the fading light of day and as our last night on the road.
We loaded the van early the next morning and turned south, towards home. It wasn't our smoothest journey (terrible traffic getting out of town, and the interstate closed because of a wreck), but home is home and it was an incredible trip!
next biggie? a trans-pacific flight coming up in less than two weeks!
2 comments:
those "Moslem noodles" sure look good, as does your day at Xian.
love
Dad
That looks like so much fun packed into one day! Wish someone had offered us a chance to make our own warriors - would loved to have done that. And those noodles must have been delicious - not much left by the time you stopped for a photo!
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