Terracotta Warriors

Our trip to see the Terracotta Warriors was a favorite and we really enjoyed going on this tour. We first went to a little shop where replicas are made by using the same clay and baking techniques that the original Terracotta Warriors were made from (at least as far as they know). This was neat to see and we of course bought a couple of scaled replicas from the the substantial gift shop there. 

The Terracotta Warriors were made to be an army for the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of the united China, in 209-210 B.C. Thousands of unique, life-like warriors  and some non-military statues were made to accompany him in the afterlife. It was fun to learn about the details put into these statues that were made such a long time ago.  You can read a lot more about them on Wikipedia, but they were discovered in 1974 and the farmer who found an intact head of a warrior while digging a well still goes to the gift shop to sign books--we of course got him to sign a book we bought. We could not take pictures because he does not want his picture taken, but otherwise we would have posted a pic of Winn getting her book signed. 

All of the statues that are upright were actually all recreated from broken pieces because at some point the warriors were pillaged and damaged. We were able to see some warriors in the process of being refurbished in the warrior "hospital" where rows of soldiers stood with missing appendages and heads. The only one found in tact was an archer that is kneeling. It is also amazing that at originally, they were all completely painted, but paint quickly disappeared when exposed to the air.  

Below are some of the photos we took......