Garden gnomes

Took the overnight train from Beijing to Xi'an last night and already the group has divided into two halves - the Fun Gang and the No Fun Gang. Thankfully I'm in the former supported by a British couple, Jo and Jay, Aussie Jodie and American Richard. So we did the beer and cards thing while the others read and slept and generally looked on disapprovingly. But the beer is only about 3.3% ABV here so the chances of us getting up to any alcohol-fuelled high jinx was fairly limited.

Anyway, got to the very nice city of Xi'an which was once China's capital city, and went to see the Terracotta Warriors, a vast underground network of 6000 lifesize soldiers protecting the tomb of the first Emperor of China in about 200BC I think, but only discovered in 1974. The scale of it is immense and must have taken tens of thousands of men to complete. Each individual piece is unique and manufactured to a very high standard, probably because if the craftsmanship wasn't up to scratch then the poor craftsman risked having his head lopped off. Anyway, all very impressive and worthy of its "Eighth Wonder of the World" tag.

Also went for a bike ride around the 14km city wall surrounding Xi'an. Nice city, shame we've only got one night here really.

Xi'an, China