Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Breakfast at Grand Mercure Hotel
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| Breakfast at the hotel (the Grand Mercure).
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| City Wall
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| The city walls and the main gate (the south gate). They're darn tall!
| A large building atop the main gate.
| The city walls are big, with huge gate houses, and wide enough for a
platoon (and many bicyclists).
| Oddly, the moat runs a bit outside of the city walls; there's a park
that runs between the moat and the walls. Our tour guide said it's so
the peasants can seek the protection of the city walls without actually
being let inside the city.
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Roofs.
I was told there are restrictions on the heights of
buildings within the walls. No new buildings can be built that are
taller than the gatehouse. Buildings constructed before the rules went
into affect are allowed, but were required to renovate their roof
appropriately to match other Chinese old buildings.
| A hotel/restaurant/karaoke building near the city gate. (I took the
picture because I thought it looked interesting.)
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| Lunch at Da Wan Cheng Fandian (Restaurant)
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| The lamp above our table in our private room was hung with ornamental
glass.
| Sorghum cold noodles - sour and oily and spicy.
| Celery, lotus seeds, and something else.
| Though they look like peppers, I was told these were a form of green
beans. The yellow pieces are actually part of a chrysanthemum flower.
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| According to my notes, beef and mushrooms. I guess those long stem-y
things must be mushrooms, as, if they were not, I would definitely have
written down something else.
| Pork and crispy things. According to my notes, these were onions but
they look more like bean sprouts in this picture.
| "Taro rose." (This is labeled correctly; these are not egg rolls.)
| Dates, aloe, and cucumber.
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| In the center, shrimp with chilies, surrounded by little baskets of
sweet popcorn with shrimp. The latter shrimp was the gloppy honey-mayo
type.
| I was told this was braised eggplant, but the thick coating made me
think it was fried.
| Winter melon and mushrooms.
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| En Route to Mausoleum
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| A temple on a hilltop on a hill we passed on the way to the First Qin
Emperor's mausoleum.
| Another temple.
| The hills were pretty big and green.
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| Warm-Up Tomb of Terracotta Warriors, Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor
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| Unexcavated rock in the first tomb we entered. This tomb is meant to be
a gradual warm-up before visiting the major tomb.
| Scattered body parts of the terracotta warriors: torsos, legs, etc.
| Assorted top-halves of bodies. Sorry about the focus.
| More body parts, just waiting to be re-assembled. They're left where
they fell when the roof collapsed.
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| Pictures of how the warriors appeared when they were initially
unearthed. Yes, they were painted! The color faded rapidly upon
exposure to air.
| A complete archer.
| A general. You can tell each warrior's rank by his clothes and his
hairstyle, in particular how many top-knots he has. The general has
three.
| An officer. These figures were probably larger than life, unless
Qin-era Chinese are a bit larger than most modern people. That said,
our guide said it was still under debate because all the figures appear
to be modeled (faces, body shape, etc.) on real people.
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| This crouching warrior still has some color.
| Horses and warriors.
| A contingent of headless warriors. They're occasionally handless or
armless as well. This feels like something out of an adventure movie.
(The heads were crushed when the roof collapsed.) Really, they're
awaiting restoration.
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