China: Terracotta Warriors

The Terracotta Warriors are an hour outside of Xi'an and since I was in that part of China for only a day, I couldn't spend nearly as much time there as I would have liked. I took the 2-hour tour, but there were some options that lasted up to 2 days.

The three excavated chambers used to be linked to Emperor Qin Shi Huang's burial mound by tunnels. The first of the three was found in 1974 by a farmer who was digging a well, and he happened to be there when I went. There are still 597 other tunnels leading out from the burial mound to other chambers that haven't been opened yet. All of the terracotta figures were initially painted, but the paint colors faded away within 30 minutes after they were exposed to sunlight, so further excavation is postponed until archaeologists can find a better way to preserve them. There are no plans to ever open the burial mound, in order to preserve the integrity of the grave.

All of my photos look foggy. There's so much smog in China that everything looked that way all the time.

Mountains on the way 

Museum Complex

Largest excavation pit

What all of the warriors look like when they're first uncovered

There are about 2,000 uncovered figures and five or six thousand more under the ground. Archaeologists come to Xi'an every day to participate in the restoration.

 The only figure that was found completely intact