Terracotta Warriors- As impressive as I'd hoped.

There are places in the world, famous travel destinations, that I have heard of since I was a kid that seemed spectacular, exotic and beyond any hope that I would one day visit them. The home of the Terracotta Warriors is one of those places. When they were found in 1974 by local farmers of Xi Yang village and soon came to the worlds attention, China was closed off to the rest of the world. The Cultural Revolution was coming to an end. Travelling anywhere overseas seemed beyond me, travelling to China was never going to be possible.

So when our Chinese friends offered to show our group of travelling friends their country and the opportunity to visit Xian specifically to visit the soldiers, I was both thrilled and a little nervous.

Beijing Hutongs

The Hutong laneway we stayed on.

During our recent visit to Beijing with a group of travelling friends we were fortunate to stay in one of the Hutongs near the Forbidden City. The Hutongs, first created in Yuan Dynasty the times of Kublai Khan, are residential areas that are made up of small alley ways that sit between the main roads.

Aristocrats and Ministers of the Forbidden City were housed here in courtyard homes or Si-He-Yuan. These large elegant homes that were originally built for one family around a central courtyard were subdivided during the Cultural Revolution and again to house thousands of homeless people following the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. In recent years huge areas of Hutongs have been replaced by modern developments.

Photo- Xian Sandstorm

It is hard to believe that surrounding the ancient City Wall in Xian, China, is a modern city of 10 million people. For several days in March the city was covered by sand blowing in from the Gobi Desert. In the strangely beautiful eeriness you could imagine a time when the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty patrolled the battlements. The sandstorm reduced the distance we could see to about 200 metres. The effect added to the experience of travelling around the 13.7 kms of wall.