What
we did: Tomb of Emperor Jingdi
Budget: 450 Yuan / $75; Spent: 633 Yuan / $105.50
Budget: 450 Yuan / $75; Spent: 633 Yuan / $105.50
Patty here.
We spent a little more than we would have
liked today and yesterday too I guess. Our budget really hasn’t taken into
consideration the rich price tag on anything deemed “touristy” in China. But,
we’re really hoping that once we head South, we can get back on track.
Afterall, our hostel tomorrow night will be the cheapest one yet at 60Y a night
which is roughly $10/night for the both of us.
After going to bed late last night, it was
rough getting out of bed this morning. We had a great time with a really fun,
good-humoured couple from Chile who Jeff mentioned in the last post (Alfonso
and Catalina) and a guy from India (Chendu) who coincidentally happened to be
sitting next to the four of us as Alfonso and Catalina were showing us their
pictures from India. The coincidence of it all is interesting to me because we
never would have gone to the hostel computers to look through Alfonso and
Catalina’s India pictures if the couple’s hard drive did not have a virus, in
which case we never would have sat down next to Chendu to strike up a good
conversation about India between the 5 of us, and as a result of the whole
encounter, we now have a really great contact for India in Chendu. And, Chendu
was in Xi’an for only one night.
He’s a foreign exchange student living Beijing
for a semester as he completes his MBA. What a personality! He has a great
sense of humour and it seems he is someone who makes friends everywhere he
goes. We ended up spending the whole day with him today and staying up late
chatting with him last night so we got to know him fairly well. He gave us some
very insightful and handy tips for India, and it turns out he returns to India
before Christmas so we may even meet up with him at some point. He even
mentioned we could perhaps stay with his parents in his home town if we wanted,
but he thought there were probably better sights to see in India; although the
idea of staying with a host family in India would be pretty neat. We’ll see I
guess.
So we got up and out of our room at 9:15am
and started our day. The plan was to make our way on our own to the Tomb of
Jindgi along with Chendu. We were going to split the cost of the taxi and
figured it would end up being cheaper if we did on our own and avoided the tour
package from the hostel. After some discussion with the hostel people, it
turned out we would get a much better deal through them. So, we bought our tour
tickets through the hostel. This ended up being very convenient and gave us
time to eat some breakfast before heading out. A mini bus left the hostel at
10am and we met a nice Italian couple on our way there. The tour ended up being
just the 5 of us. Upon arrival to the tomb which was about 1 hour by bus, we
noticed the explanations of what we were seeing were seriously lacking so we
ended up spending more money and got a tour guide. This was a really good
decision. Daniel our guide, turned out to be excellent. And had it not been for
him, we would have been clueless most of our way through the tomb.
The tomb itself was very cool. It’s
enormous and the vast majority of it has yet to be excavated because we still
do not have the technology to safely dig up the rest of the area. In fact, 5
Archaeologists died upon excavating the area we saw today. I had no idea the
work of an Archaeologist was so dangerous.
The tomb today was made up of terracotta
statues of people, pottery, tools, animals, etc. The miniature statues of
people and most of the animals were about the size of a toddler. They were
dressed up in real clothes made of silk and they represented the Emperors court
i.e. the servants, advisors, generals, and other courtiers. Basically, the tomb
was designed to provide the Emperor with anything and everything he would need
to survive in the after-life. Interestingly, the creation of the tomb often
began while the Emperor was still alive and able to provide direction on how he
wanted it completed. In earlier times, real people and animals were buried
alive with Emperors. In this particular tomb though, Jingdi was kind enough to
only include his pets. The tomb was organized into different compartments
representing a different field within the government at the time and/or storage
space for the Emperor’s belongings. They know the tomb was organized in this
way because little stamps were discovered in each compartment that represented
the jurisdiction of that particular compartment. For example in the compartment
with people and cattle and the remnants of grains, there was a stamp found with
the Chinese symbol representing the Department of Agriculture. It was showcased
in the museum there today.
Here are some pics of the tomb from our
visit today:
1. Below is an image taken through the glass floor beneath us at
the museum and excavation site. You can see the little terracotta
figurines and the outlines of the chariots and the horses. The chariots
were wooden but have since decomposed.
2.
3. Bones of Emperor’s pets. These are the bones of his two oxen in this pic.
4. The Emperor’s meat and deli department for the after-life. His favourite: dogs. However, he also had pets as dogs… go figure.
After the tour I really needed to use the
washroom. But upon entering I decided to hold it until home. We got stuck in
traffic so I ended up suffering a bit. But, soon enough we were back at our hostel
and ready to find something to eat. The hostel restaurant was closed so we
headed outside to look for a meal. We ended up at a really nice mall with a
food court on the 6th floor. Jeff and I made some okay choices. We
selected gyoza type dumplings that were pretty good, and then some other cheap,
not-so-good dim sum type stuff. We ended up being jealous of Chendu’s selection
and we were still pretty hungry since we didn’t really get a lot of food. We
headed outside to get some more of the street potatoes we fell in love with. We
shared them with Chendu and bid him farewell as he left for the train station
to catch an over-night train ride to Beijing.
After the potatoes we were still hungry… so
we went to McDonalds and had some burgers. Yup, we might get fat in China, like
Jeff suspected. We then looked around the supremely expensive mall, where no
doubt the crème de la crème of Xi’an only shop. Fortunately, we were dressed
much more decently than in Japan, and we didn’t feel totally out of place. Many
of the fall/winter coats I fell in love with ended up being over $500. There
wasn’t one under that amount. I did come across a light weight Uniqlo rain
jacket though for about $22, but we walked away.
We headed to back the hostel and that was
pretty much the end of the day for us.
Tomorrow we’ll keep it low-key and
hopefully very cheap. Maybe we’ll make another trip to Wal-mart to grab some
snacks for our trip. We take a flight to Kunming tomorrow night. This means we
are headed SOUTH!! WOoohoooo!
Lotsa love,
Patty
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