This has been a hard post to write. Hard to find the words, and hard to post. I have rewritten this thrice, and almost posted twice. For those of you imaging that I have been out exploring Shanghai history by day and sky rise bars by night, well I must disappoint you. I have spent the past week trying to download a semesters worth of accounting fundamentals into my brain (still working on it too!). But you are not here to listen to me whine.
 |
| This cannot compare to Cafe au Lait and Pain au chocolat. |
I successfully avoided my good friend Murphy going down the mountain, and arrived at the train station a whole hour ahead of schedule. Now I was the twentieth person to by a ticket, after the ticket office opened late, but I did hop the first bus down from the cable way to the tourist center. Something that saved me a bit of time was that the bus stopped on the main road to allow people to board a bus back to Xi'an. This allowed me the opportunity to catch a cab to the station nearly thirty minutes ahead of schedule. My reward for duping Murphy was a steaming up of Nescafe and a bag of Chinese Swiss Rolls, but my good luck would not last.
After arriving in Xi'an, I boarded the metro but got myself turned around and a very unhelpful metro attendant confusing me even more. I exited the metro with the intention of grabbing a cab, but was intercepted before I could even make it to the curb. A woman leaning against her moped asked me where I was headed, and when I told her, she said 20 kuai .... ummm, ok friend forgive my brain but 20 kuai for what exactly? I take you. Oh, of course. And that is how me, my pack, and my camera climbed aboard and hoped for the best.
I will say I got my 20 kuai worth. She got me there in under ten minutes, but we did at least two illegal crossings, cut through a fruit market, and made use of a pedestrian/ bicycle underpass. My favorite heart stopping moment was either stopping sideways in oncoming traffic (read bus less than 100 feet away) to make one of those illegal crossings or almost going straight into a grape stall because traffic unexpectedly stopped in the fruit market. My chauffeur was full of useful tips though, like that I didn't need to go all the way to the bus stop. Instead, just hail the bus and tell them you are one person -- worked perfectly and I was on my way to the Terracotta Warriors (TCW) in five to ten minutes.
The bus took an hour which was pretty impressive since it doubles as a city bus even though the side only lists three stops: the train station, the hot springs, and TCW. It all makes since at the end of the line when a bus so full of people that all thirty seats were filled and addition ten to twenty people were standing in the isle was reduced to myself and a Chinese couple. Clearly this bus would only run two to three times a day instead of two or three times an hour, and would certainly cost more than 8 kuai per way.
Bumbling my way towards the entrance, once again, I went to the wrong window for my ticket, but this time I specifically asked which window to go to so I could use my "student Id." I saved 20 kuai this time, and splurged 5 kuai on an electric car ticket up to the entrance.The whole complex seems to sit on a dry stretch of plain with mountains looming to the north. It was hot, arid, full of dust, and not a hint of breeze -- reminded me of Oklahoma. There are a total of three excavated pits with a museum, a tourist information center, a cafe, a tourist shop, and a movie theater to round it all out. I imagine it is something like Mount Rushmore would be; a huge tourist draw out in the middle of nowhere, so a little oasis of consumerism was built around it.
A brief detour to the toilet led to the longest conversation I had had since leaving Beijing. A middle aged woman was waiting for the single sitting toilet available when I entered the restroom. As I was washing my hands I overheard that she had been waiting for a while. When I saw her start to bend over to check for feet, I stopped her and told her I would check for her. I banged on the door and asked if anyone was inside in Chinese, then repeated it in English. No one. Apparently someone just decided to lock the door to the only sitting toilet. Fun fact though, almost all public toilets in China have a groove on the outer side of the lock. You can slip a coin into this groove and unlock the door from the outside. The lady was thankful, but as I told her - I have a mother, and I hope that someone would help her in a similar situation. Love you, Mummy.
I started my tour of the pits at Pit III with the intention of going backwards. Friends and acquaintances I met in Beijing each said that this was a more ideal way of seeing the exhibit since Pit I is the most phenomenal. Pit III was tucked away behind the other pits, and had only one small excavated section, but due to its size I was able to get close pictures of the details put into the TCW.
I made quick work of this pit, but took a stroll around the parched gardens of the complex. The native trees were looking pretty good, but all of the transplanted flowers were wilting under the constant barrage of heat and sun. Even without air conditioning the cool darkness of Pit II was a welcome change. Easily three times the size of Pit III, but only one part had excavations of the TCW, the rest seemed to be housing structures. And of course, what tourist attraction would be complete without an opportunity to have a 3D picture of you taken with the attraction come alive.
And this is where it starts getting difficult. I came to one part of an excavated pit, and was zooming in trying to catch the details in the TCW despite the low light. I was not really getting the shot I wanted, so I took the view finder from my eye to reexamine the layout, and see if a better shot or a different angle would get me the shot I was looking for. It took all of three seconds for me to go from technical analysis to abject horror.
I was trying to capture the detail on this particular warrior's face.
And this was the view to my left.
Flashes of every picture I have seen of Trench Warfare from WWI, and Foxholes from Vietnam started coming out of the cobwebs. Broken soldiers left on the battle field, surrounded by brothers and enemies. Rationally, I know that these figures below me were not flesh and blood but with very tangible images running behind my eyes, that lined started blurring. Maybe I personalize things too much or maybe it was that they were soldiers.This is the closest I have come and ever wish to come to either a battlefield or a mass grave. All those photos or films never seemed quite real. Awful historical events that shaped society, and simple facts of life in bygone eras. Now, I could put no distance between me and those images anymore. It was easy to imagine how that could have been my father, my grandfathers, my friends, my cousins, my brother. The horrors of war overwhelmed my senses.
I am not one to shy away from the truth, or avoid a confrontation, but I also understand my limits. I took the time to sort through my thoughts and regain my composure before moving onto Pit I. I didn't know what awaited me. As I said, I had been told it was phenomenal, breath-taking, and awe-inspiring, but then no one had told me they had a reaction similar to mine. Eating spoonfuls of peanut butter has an amazing ability to redirect my thoughts to after school snacks, Grandma's cookies, and late nights in Germany. I can't think of a single thing more comforting than Grandma cookies. With my mind settled, and my supply of peanut butter heavily depleted, I headed off to Pit I.
Words are elusive here. I can only set the stage, much like in a play script. Oscar Wilde accompanied me on this trip, and he would have appreciated the drama evoked by the sift in stage. Pit III and Pit II are both dark buildings. They have low ceilings, and low lights as if the shadows might soften the harshness within. Pit I has a vaulted ceiling with natural and artificial light illuminating every aspect of the glory within.
Walking in, your are faced with an army marching at you. The light, the size, and the formation lends itself to an army marching off to war with hopes of glory or returning victorious from the front. Each soldier willing to fight for country, honor, glory, freedom, or wealth. This is the splendor of war. The parades and celebrations that gloss over those left broken on the battlefield. Are they marching towards a fate represented in Pit II or are they returning forever changed for having made it out alive?
As much as I despair over what I saw, and how I know that others don't, I still carry faith and hope. I will likely never truly understand what the horror of war, but I continue to find the glories of life; those short moments that you fall back on when your are have a bad day. I found one when walking out of the complex. I was hailed by the Chinese family that I sat next to on the bus to Huashan, and saw during lunch on the mountain. You can fairly state that I am pretty obvious in a crowd -- blonde, big blue Papa pack, and traveling alone -- and they are just one Chinese family in the hundreds milling about, but they had no reason to hail me. These people knew I could not competently communicate with them, and could not know if I would remember them, but they still wanted to say hello, offer an apple, and share a smile. I am keeping those smiles for a rainy day.
I don't have any favorite pictures to share, but this is my, "I was here photo"
And the link to the Google Album:
https://plus.google.com/photos/108488715129842232914/albums/5916340798051831425?authkey=CICrkOy644v7Qg
No comments:
Post a Comment