Terra-cotta Warriors at Xi-an

Back in 1974, some local farmers out in the countryside were drilling a series of wells in search of water. To their surprise, they dug up some pottery fragments and some ancient bronze weapons. It was soon discovered that these farmers had been living and farming on top of this incredible army of terra-cotta warriors and had no idea of what lay just about 15 feet under their feet.
The emperor, Qin Shihuang, who had all of this army created was born in 259 BC! He became emperor when he was 13 years old and began ruling when he was 22 years old. He seemed some what paranoid (my opinion) since he began putting together this massive army of approx. 8000 warriors to protect him in his "afer life". His reign was full of war and bloody murder but eventually he unified all of the country of China which was a huge undertaking and accomplishment but very ruthless and savage at the same time. He used thousands of people to complete this obcession he had and then he instructed his son to kill every person that was involved in this work and knew the location of where they buried this whole army and the emperor, when he died. It is estimated that his son killed 725,000 people.

They Chinese government has found 4 pits so far. The first pit is pictured above. When they first found it, they just dug every thing up and left it all exposed to the elements (rain, sun, winds, snow, cold, hot, whatever). After about a year, they realized this was not a good way to preserve this amazing find so they built a building structure to cover it. Eric visited here in 1992 and he said it was still really rustic -- more like just a tin shack covering it. For the other pits, they have first built a building and then started doing the digging and things have been preserved much better with less damage.

Some time between then and now, they have built these beautiful buildings to protect and display this wonderful, incredible find. We spent about 1 1/2 hours here with our own personal guide who approached us in the parking lot and for about $7 gave us just the best, most informative, personal tour. As we were leaving we passed a visitor's center and our guide said that some times the farmer that discovered the army is in that building to greet visitors. The door to the building was open and as we walked closer our guide said, "there he is". So we went inside and met him and shook his hand and had our picture taken with him (on Heidi's camera so I don't have that photo) and even had him autograph the book I bought. Our guide told us that the government had "reassigned" him from farmer to "celebrity" and that is his job now, to meet the visitors!
This was a mind-boggling experience. I can't even begin to comprehend how long ago 259 BC is! It was wonderful to be able to experience this first hand... it was so impressive in real life!