Pottery and archeology
24 Feb 2014 | Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
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I hitchhike my way to Xi'an where I'm gonna volunteer for a week in a mushroom farm in the suburbs. People are really nice there but the work is really dull and repetitive, I don't learn anything about mushroom farming as no one can explain me or even seems to care, they all have been there for months or years and just mechanically accomplish the required tasks. Only one of the girl speaks a little of English so also conversation is limited.
But it gives me the possibility to explore Xi'an a bit. Xi'an (西安 lit. West peace) is very interesting historically as having been the capital of the country several time, it's a walled city with the largest walls in the world, an interesting muslim district in the center... It's nice to peacefully walk around and enjoy the local life.
But one of the other main interest of the city lies in the famous Terracotta Army depicting the first Qin emperor's army whose mausoleum is close by. The 2200-years-old site is very interesting, not only you can see all this clay-made army, but it is also a museum of archeology as they explain all the technics used for the various excavations since the discovering of the first pit in 1974. And it's still growing as new pits are being discovered, recently some containing acrobats, priests or even animals.