Around Town

Eight thousand terra-cotta warriors buried in the ground for over two thousand years, accidentally unearthed by a farmer digging a well back in 1974. Sounded like my kind of place.

Our guide walked us fast through the beginning of a tourist crowd, mostly Chinese nationals, that would balloon to 100,000 persons by the end of the day. Prime viewing. Airplane hangar filled with larger-than-life silent clay soldiers. We were easily impressed. Almost all the paint had worn away from these reconstructed warriors, destroyed by a grumpy general many moons ago. But after seeing photos of what these faces would have looked like, painted, thousands upon thousands staring at you from the tomb-like chamber… lightly terrifying.

We left an hour later past more green mountains ringed in low rain clouds, pomegranate farms packed around its base.

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Walking down the 600 year-old city wall of Xi’an, the sky looked like dish water. No rain. Muggy. The sun was hidden behind that dish water, but Jacob mentioned wondering if Rose would sunburn. Her skin is so white.

“No,” our guide said. “We do not burn. We just turn dark.” She draped a light sweater over her face as a shield, trying to fit her arms behind it at the same time. “We want our skin to stay white. You see, back in ancient time, farmers and lower class people, they turned dark in the sun, working. But upper class, their skin stayed white. So that is why we want our skin white. So we wear hats and cover everything and umbrellas. We spend lots of money on keeping our skin white.”

I had to ask next, “So what do you do when you go to the beach?”

Our guide laughed. “We go just to look at ocean.”