Terracotta…Not Just for Flower Pots

Wow! My first week in Xi’an has flown by. As you can probably tell from my lack of blogging this week, I’ve been busy. Let me give you a rundown of what the days are like here. Breakfast is served at 7.30 am, which means getting up usually by 6.30 so that both George (my roommate) and I have time to shower before breakfast. Luckily, I’m waking up around 6, so that gives me time to enjoy some tea, check e-mails and ease into the day. It’s been about the only down time I’ve really had. If we’re lucky, we get a hot shower. The hot water reservoir is supposed to be filled by 6 am, but the past couple days, it hasn’t been ready until closer to 7 am. So many of us have had nice cool showers, which actually is a little on the refreshing side. (If you look at the weather we have here in Xi’an, it’s hot and humid.)


Breakfast is pretty enjoyable, typically with a mixture of Chinese and Western foods. This morning I had noodles and French toast with peanut butter. (They don’t quite hit the mark on the Western food.) We usually take about a half hour or 45 minutes just talking, sharing what we’ve thought about a lecture we had, a site we’ve visited, Chinese culture in general, or about our families back home. By 8.30 we’re heading out to walk to class.


From 9.00 until 9.50 we’re in our three language courses. This week has basically focused on getting us used to the Chinese sounds and practicing them, as well as a few basic expressions and words. I have a hard time with the Chinese “r” sound, so maybe I’ll just have to be content with having a slight speech impediment in Chinese. J Actually, “r” isn’t used too often, so I should be good. We also received Chinese names this week. For a last name, I chose Wú, since it at least starts with the same letter as Windt. Our teacher assigned us first names based on either the meanings of our first names or their sounds. She gave me Rùi. Arrgh! The dreaded “r”! So I asked her to give me a new one, one that I can actually pronounce with confidence. So on Monday, I’ll finally have my Chinese name.


From 10 until noon we have our morning lecture. This week we’ve gone from Neolithic China through the Han Dynasty. We’re basically focusing on funerary art: looking at the things that were buried with people. You may think, why?? Well, it actually allows us to see how they lived. Since the Chinese, like the Egyptians, really didn’t believe in death and that people only moved from this life to the next life, people were buried with the things that they’d need in that next life. So people were buried with the things they used every day, plus ceremonial objects. So by examining these objects, we can get a fairly decent picture of what life was like for these people. We can also see how their technology progresses as the sophistication of their burial objects gets better. It might be like someone 2000 years from now digging up more recent graves and noticing that there was a period where watches went from wind-ups with hands to digital (as many people in our society today are buried with watches).


After lunch we either have site visits or curriculum workshops. This week’s site visits have been amazing. By far the best thing was seeing the famous Terracotta Warriors. These warriors stand guarding the burial of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, the man who united China into one nation. The warriors were buried to the east of the tomb to protect the emperor from any threats to the east, as the Qin were originally from the west. These soldiers remained buried for over 2000 years and were only discovered in the 1970s when a farmer, digging a well, found an arm of one of the warriors. I saw where this well was dug. What is amazing is that it’s right at the very front line of the soldiers. Had the farmer dug the well just even five feed further east, these windows into the past may still be hidden.



Well, I know you’re interested in seeing pictures, so I’ll stop writing and get some pictures in here. Enjoy!