China – Travel Trinkets and Memories #6

Challenge Outline

Being a big fan of several Photo Challenges, I am going to try and host one myself. I am not sure how long it will last but would love it if you could take part!  Please click here for the challenge outline. Please post a link to your post on this page and I will make sure I put it on my challenge page for others to see too!

I look forward to checking out your posts!

So without further adieu here is my 6th trinket.

2000 – China – Xian, The Terracotta Army

China

In 2000. I spent a month in Nanjing on a teaching exchange. Visiting the Terracotta Army in Xian was a bucket list highlight. The army was discovered in 1974 by some local farmers. As of 2007 there were 3 pits with an estimated 8000+ soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. These terracotta sculptures are believed to be part of an elaborate tomb for the first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang and date back to 210 -209 BCE.

These wee fellows also bring back funny memories like the little local restaurant where I had a great spicy tofu dish. I learnt the Chinese name for it and for the next seven days tried to order it only to get a completely different dishes every single night. I am sure I was saying the same thing but every time a different dish, sometimes edible, sometimes not, but never mabodofu!

There was the crazy tour all the foreign teachers in the prefecture were taken on. Three busloads of us escorted by siren whirling police cars and the locals leaping into ditches on the side of the road to avoid being mowed down! We were taken to the most shocking plywood making factory. Health and safety? non existent, there were boiling cauldrons of chemicals, huge machines peeling logs with no safety barriers and the noise was horrific and not a pair of ear muffs in sight. From there we to a school for the hearing impaired. I realised where they got their future employees from.

And of course what China trip is not complete with out toilet stories. There are a few, I’ll stick to one. My accommodation was a new building on the school grounds. The plumbing was not really tried and tested and I managed to block the loo on day one. The caretaker was a lovely lady with no English what so ever and my Chinese as you can tell by the food ordering debacle was non existent so with a great deal of improv mime skills I managed to convey that I needed a plunger and a mop and bucket.

By 2000 China ,though still without a doubt a communist regime had opened up considerably since my first visit in 1987. “Friendship ” money was a thing of the past and people were wearing colours rather than the standard khaki. department stores actually had goods in them. As a foreigner I could travel to places on my own, even if I did have trouble ordering at restaurants!

Yoroshiku Onegai shimasu

Leanne