The pagoda was built to house the precious Buddhist artifacts and scrolls brought back from India by the monk Xuanzang. Xuanzang's pilgrimage formed the basis of the story Journey into the West, better known by the Japanese television series Monkey!
While the central 64 metre pagoda is impressive (we were too lazy to climb it), also worth seeing is the colourful jade wall representation of Sakyamuni's (Buddha's) life. The story has obviously undergone some modifications over the years, with Sakyamuni now depicted as having special powers as a baby and a halo through his life - very much like the story of Christ.
The wooden depictions of Xuanzang's journey are also worth a look, though I could not see any monkeys flying around on clouds.
The following destination was the obligatory shopping stop, ostensibly to learn how the warriors were constructed (head and hands moulded separately from the body, which was made on a pottery wheel). Really, it was just a shallow attempt to get us to buy various sized repoductions and furniture.
From the shape of the ground indentations the Banpo people were neolithic smurfs. Not certain about their skin colour being blue, but they did live in mushrooms. Or so their wood and adobe houses appeared.
Excavations show the skeletons of adults, sometimes buried together in communual cemetary grounds. The babies were placed in clay pots kept in the houses of the mothers, who would continue to "look after" their offspring. Descendants were also known to chop off a couple of their digits to be buried with their parents. Don't remember ever seeing the smurfs doing that.
The lunch was also vary much a tourist trap location, though at least B got to eat some rice (short grain - the Cantonese seem to use long grain). The food was okay and at least we didn't go through our normal practice of searching the whole city for food.
Each time the coach set off we napped. After late nights and early mornings we were both exhausted. A couple of good things about the tour was that we were driven around and could relax from planning and thinking.
Qin Wind, Qin Smelody, Qin Culture
Maybe they also ate cabbages for lunch.
The warriors were as impressive as the hype suggested. There are three excavations. The first pit is in the aircraft hanger like building. This contains the reconstructed warriors in formation, plus others in a partly reconstructed state. Much of the location remains unexcavated in order to retain the colouration on the buried warriors.
The seconds pit houses the general staff and a chariot. Most of the third and final pit is unexcavated, but a few figures have been reconstructed, including a couple of archers, a general and a lower ranking officer. These you can see up close and the level of detail is incredible, down to the tread of their shoes.
I would like to have seen more of Xian, walked the city walls and explored the Muslim Quarter. It seems a fascinating place, though sometimes the streetscapes reminded me of Beijing. Tomorrow we are off very early to Chengdu and Leshan. Time to get an early night.