At the mosque in Xi'an - which looked like every other Taoist temple, Confucian temple and most Buddhist temples - we were given a tourist questionnaire that asked, among other silly questions, why we were in Xi'an. Just as Hiroshima draws people interested in cities destroyed by atomic bombs Xi'an attracts people for its clay statues built a couple of thousand years ago by some megalomaniac paranoid military genius.
And they are impressive, for their quantity, quality and age. Nothing else comes close. The Xi'an museum shows terracotta figurines from much later periods and they pale in comparison. It's a shame the business surrounding the terracotta warriors is in such a state. Our introduction to the site was some very pushy guides that tried every tactic in the book including emotional blackmail to try and sell their services. We wasted our money on a truly atrocious audio guide which produced so many meaningless measurements I thought we were back in North Korea. Maybe it was comeuppance for not hiring a human guide or maybe we were rescued from even worse exposure to regurgitated figures and dull facts.
The 360 degree theatre made up of multiple screens should have told the story of the man behind the warriors, Qin Shi Huang, but we didn't hang around because the pointless battle sequences in the documentary never seemed to end. Though it would probably have held our interest had more than one screen been working.
Our most pleasant experience was on a tandem cycling around Xi'an on its city walls, parts of which were completely empty. As soon as we were on the ramparts the temperature seemed to cool and the city noise die away. It made us feel even calmer to occasionally glance down at the hectic humid city life as other people sweated about their business.
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