Xi’An and the Terracota Warriors

The Beijing Program of Asian Studies, the official name of our study abroad program, was started in the mid-nineteen eighties. Each semester, the program would lead the thirty-to-forty students in a two-week tour around China, visiting China’s most popular tourist destinations, and some of the world’s most interesting sights and sounds. The program had matured enough to have this program down to a near-routine by the time I joined up.

I had mailed in my last essay just a few minutes before midnight on Friday, and that next day we were leaving Beijing by train in the afternoon. I took a few hours sleep, got my haircut, and packed up two bags of clothing to prepare. The group assembled in front of our dorm, and after a bit of time trying to find the bus, we reached the Beijing West railway station, and boarded our train bound for the city of Xian.


Chinese intercity trains are quite an experience. Basically, you have the option of a “soft sleeper deluxe,” “soft sleeper,” “hard sleeper,” or “hard sleeper uncovered.” Our first trip, an eight-hour overnight trip out of Beijing, we had the fourth. Hard sleeper denotes a three-bunk car–that is, three bunks to a row, lower, middle, and top. The bunks are separated by a wall, but with no covering. The photo to the left really sums up the car better than I can describe. Sleeping was mildly comfortable, but the dining car was tasty enough.

After our train ride, we arrived in the city of Xian. Xian is the capital of the Shaanxi province, once one of the poorest provinces in China. The city is distinguished as being a national capital during the Tang dynasty (618-907), and for its massive, still-standing city wall, stretching 13.7 kilometers around the city center. Xian is also now known as the staying city for those wishing to visit the Terracotta Warriors, one of the most impressive archaeological and historical finds in history.

The Terracotta Warriors number over 10,000 men and horses. During his reign, Emperor Qin, the first emperor of a unified China in 200 some B.C., commissioned the reproduction of his entire army in terracotta clay, so as to take with him into the afterlife. No two statutes are alike, modeled on the actual warriors of Emperor Qin. As a historical sidenote, Emperor Qin, after fighting for several years, unified China from several warring tribes into a single nation. He ordered that the Great Wall of China–at the time, several smaller walls segments–be built, or, more accurately, unified into a single wall. His status as China’s unifier means the nation now bears his name, as “Qin” became “China.”