China 7 June 2010

Have been out all day. Went to the Benpo site, Emperor Qin's Mausoleum and then the Terracotta Warriors.

Was seven of us on the tour. 2 Canadians (who spoke English and French), 3 French (who spoke French and English), 1 Singaporean (who spoke English, French and Mandarin) and little old Aussie me. I pretended I could understand some of the French, well I could, or at least every 10th word.

Was raining all day and quite cold. Did not bring a coat from Australia so borrowed a jumper from Andrew and I was glad I did.

We had a really good lunch. The seven of us decided to share a banquet for 38 yuan each (about AUD 5.50) Had 3 meat dishes, rice and four vegetable dishes. One dish was honeyed yam and it was delicious.



The Benpo site is a Neolithic village and very interesting. The first phot is a the outlines of a Benpo village, the second a food cellar and the third is a tip bottom bottle. It is suggested that the bottle is laid on its side in the water and when it is full it tips upright.




The Emperor Qin's Mausoleum (he was the first Emporer).


The grounds of the Mausoleum are quite spectacular, quite large and lots of gardens but we were all confused as to where exactly the Mausoleum WAS!





This is not the pit where the warriors were discoved and even though there are thousands of warriors they were all broken and so they are being pieced together like a jig-saw and then moved to this pit. At the other end of this pit archeologists and students are working on the reconstruction.

They were all painted but, when exposed to the air, all the paint flaked off. They are working on ways of preserving the remaining painted pieces.




This is a photo of Yang Xinman the farmer who discovered Warriors on his farm. He authographed the book on the Warriors I purchased.








Want to share with you the toilet situation here. Apart from the fact about no toilet paper down the drain most of the toilets here are "squat". Well if I can not find a pedestal type I usually wait because if I got down I doubt I would get up again or would go face first into heavens only knows what. But I found myself in a situation where I just could not wait. Did I mention the toilet doors do not have locks and the doors open OUT. Anyway, without being too indelicate and I had long slacks on, so I pulled the legs up to my knees and pulled the top down to my knees and sort of bent the knees and hoped for the best, butted the door with my head, took a step forward to balance, missed completely and then I was really in trouble. Two women just stared at me the whole time. Oh, and I put the paper down the drain, that will teach them to muck around with me. Boy do men have it easy in this life.

So much more to share but I have had a really long day and am going out for dinner with the people from the tour.

Thanks for all the emails, just love receiving them and so pleased so many are following my trip.