The Terracotta Warriors

, originally uploaded by sazztastical.

OH.MY.GOD.
They are just brilliant. Beautiful. Wonderful. Amazing. Pick any word and it will describe the warriors. No photo could ever do them justice and just the sheer scale of them is unbelievable. It's like a huge aircraft hangar they are in so it's lovely and big and light and you just walk all around the outside of them. Some of them - a lot of them - have been perfectly restored, others have been left as they were unearthed, broken into a hundred pieces and all piled up on top of each other. I can't believe that these statues were built two thousand years ago. They were supposed to be buried when the Emperor died but it sounds like he wasn't the most popular person and when he died suddenly, while inspecting the site, his dynasty was overthrown and the new bloke on the job sent in his troops to smash the warriors up and burn everything before burying them. So that's what they did and that's why nothing was ever written about them. There doesn't seem to be any written evidence about them before they were uncovered in 1976. The whole area has been done brilliantly and it was just staggering to see it for myself. I guess I can tick that off the list of things to do before I die :)