Are you one of those people who are bit fearful around airports?
Some people are afraid of flying and deal with it by getting a lot drunk and a bit fighty.
Some people are oddly specifically afraid of just the take off and landing, like there’s a better way if getting 36000 feet high.
Some people are secretly just a little bit worried that their suitcase will inexplicably burst open in transit and that their belongings will arrive along the luggage belt in an inconvenient individual manner.
Sock. T-shirt. Sock. Pants. Pants. Tears.

Holy Pantsonthebeltophobia Batman!

Her name was Katherine.
Katherine is our guide for our stay in Xi’an, a city that served as the Capital of China in ancient times and once being the starting point of the Silk Road, (this obviously predates the ages where road building progressed through Yellow Brick and Cobble before all finally agreeing on Asphalt).
In modern times, since 1974 infact, Xi’an has been known throughout the world as the location of the Terracotta Army, and another tick on the “Chinese things to see” list

Katherine referred to herself in the third person for the whole car journey and Katherine did something with the English language that was genius.
Believable in context but nowhere near the actual intended meaning, and mostly animal words.
One probing line of questions went (almost)exactly as follows:

“A chicken? Ummmm…. no. No, you’d definitely need a garden for a chicken really and we only have a communal garden, might upset the neighbours. Good idea though, fresh eggs and that. Interesting question too. Well done.”

“2 Chicken and bedroom and a garage for car? Do you mean Kitchen? I think you mean Kitchen. We’ve got a kitchen, yes. Just the one though.”

Pulling into hour hotel, it just got more obscure.
Firstly, the Grand Mercure Hotel was built in concrete by the Russians, never a combination that will win any design awards but nevertheless inside the lobby it was pleasantly grand enough, and brilliantly, there was a Monk Conference on.
Loads of Monks, on holiday, in a 5 star hotel. One monk was the happiest man on earth when we said
“Nee How!” ( meaning Hello! or, possibly Chair! depending on your inflection).
He turned around giggling joyously and then made a face identical to the Laughing Buddha – who incidentally is popular in China but only popular with the 3% who are both Buddhists and avid statue carvers as most of China still follow the Communist way of no religion at all, but tolerate the resplendent temples and statues in every city we visited.

As we discussed the chandelier that was reflecting irritatingly onto the massive T.V. we relived a truly peculiar day and wound down by watching a bit of Chinese television.
When the infomercial that claimed a drink could make you grow taller, complete with before and after interviews was followed immediately by another infomercial that claimed a drink would make your boobs bigger, we retired to the padded room to rest up for the trip to the Terracotta Warriors the next day.

It was whilst we were at the wall that Katherine taught us how she remembers the names of the various dynasties who ruled China for thousands of years, something we were struggling to comprehend as we’d inconveniently arrived without our PHD in ancient history.
Her technique only applied to the 3 dynasties whom had designated Xi’an as a capital city, so maybe more 11 plus than PHD, and went as follows;
Chin, Tongue, Hand.
Katherine helpfully pointed to each body part as she spoke as we clearly hadn’t had enough confusion since yesterday.
It was some time later that we learned that the ‘Chin Dynasty’ was the ‘Qin Dynasty’ the ‘Tongue Dynasty’ was “Tang” and “Hand” was “Han”.
Simple really.

He dug, found some scraps of pottery, thought nothing of it and continued to dig, and then came across an arm and then a leg.
Understandably freaked out he contacted the Government, because Time Team hadn’t been invented, and by 1979 the first few hundred warriors were on public display following 5 years of excited digging and gluing.

There are still plenty of smashed up pieces of pottery that are being painstakingly sellotaped back together to keep the archaeologists busy and this is done at the far end of Pit One, allowing a better view of the “under reconstruction” warriors than those completed ones that are arranged in the 6 metre deep pit in regiments of soldier ranks.
Pits two and three contain a further 400 statues and these are officer class and charioteer statues, including another revelation – they only made horses here as well!
Proper sized clay horses!
It should be known as “The Terracotta Army (and a few horses)”

Through to the gift shop, and amongst the regular giant pencils with tassels, Chairman Mao watches and replica warriors, there was a small crowd of people around a desk letting a very old looking man autograph their £12 souvenir programme books.
Never one to miss out on meeting a celebrity, even when I don’t know who they are, I bought a book and joined the queue whilst Katherine explained that we were very fortunate as this man was the farmer who dug the well and got freaked out by loose pottery limbs back in 1974, and he’s not here every day.
You’re going to have to take my word for this though, as we weren’t allowed to take any photographs of him.
We did wonder if this was because they wheel out a different pensioner from the local old folks’ home every day. Outlawing photos means no incriminating evidence to compare.
Our farmer was small, bald, and had funny little round red glasses on, just incase you’re in the area and you pop in for a look and see Grandpa Joe and not Grandpa Ghandi.