Terracotta Warriors in Cling Wrap - I Kid you Not! - Taking Public Bus to see the Terracotta Army

We were in Xi'An, China!  Today, we visited the Terracotta Warriors Museum.  This was on our 'bucket list' coming to Xi'An, so we were definitely excited.   After all, this is arguably the most important reason why tourists visit Xi'An in the first place!

Feeling adventurous, we decided to take the public bus.  After researching on the Internet, we realised that it wasn't difficult.   You just need to find your way to Xi'An Main railway station (not to be confused with Xi'An North High Speed Rail station).  Unfortunately, there wasn't any metro stop near the main railway station, so we took a taxi from our hotel (Sheraton Xi'An North).  The ride didn't take too long, about 15 minutes.

After alighting at the taxi stand, it was a short walk across a public square to a bus bay, where there were many tourist buses waiting.  There were several companies, but they bring you to the same destination, i.e. Terracotta Army Museum, albeit some have slightly different stops.  The bus fare was 7RMB or 8RMB per adult each way (7 or 8 depending on the company you take).  You can pay the bus conductor in cash.

The ride took about an hour.  Once you get off at the bus terminus, it was quite easy to find your way to the visitor entrance (just follow the signs). Buy your tickets and get yourself in!

The video below shows you from the time we arrived at Xi'An Main railway station.   We got on a bus (it was blue in colour) and made our way to the Terracotta Army museum. En-route, we did stop at another tourist site, but that's for another blog post.

The Terracotta Museum itself was huge.  Apparently, the crowds can get overwhelming (just look at the size of the entrance, and the barricades).  Fortunately, it wasn't that crowded when we were there. We got our tickets easily (very short queue) and made our way in.

Pit 1 is the most famous pit.  Take all your pictures there!



Some photographs to follow.  After buying our tickets, this was the main entrance.  Quite intimidating isn't it!

A photo of my ticket.  We paid in cash.

From the main entrance, you still had to walk about 1KM to get to the main museum proper.  There was some electric cart buggy you could ride (for a fee of course), but I think the ride wasn't worth it.  The ground was very flat and it was an easy walk.  The vast majority walked.

Inside the main Terracotta museum grounds, there are essentially 3 pits that you must visit.  You can find all the detailed descriptions of these pits when you google, so I won't repeat them here.

As many of the reviewers have noted, Pit 1 is the most awesome and most famous.  This is what it looks like.   The scale is mind-boggling. Terracotta Army Pit 1 is an east-west rectangular pit, measuring 230 meters (252 yards) long, 62 meters (68 yards) wide and 4.5 to 6.5 meters (15 to 21 feet) deep.  It is said to contain 6,000 warriors and horses.

Another view of Pit 1.

Yet another angle. You can see the soldiers all lined up. Obviously, when they uncovered this gigantic pit in 1976, it wasn't so neat.  Hey, after being buried for 2,000 years, it ain't going to be so neat.

Take all your photos here, because Pit 2 and Pit 3 have far fewer warriors.  Here is Pit 2 - also very large, but they are still excavating.

And pit 3 - which is supposedly a command pit.   Pit 3 is the smallest, by far. Built in the shape of the Chinese character “凹”, the Terracotta Army Pit 3 measures 17.6 meters (19.2 yards) long from east to west, 21.4 meters (23.4 yards) wide from north to south and 4.8 meters (15.7 feet) deep. It can be divided into three parts: chariot and horse chamber, northern wing room, and southern wing room. It is thought that the northern wing room was used to pray for victory and the southern one for collecting military tactics. A total of 68 lifelike terracotta warriors were excavated from this pit, 42 from the southern wing room and 22 from the northern one. Sadly, many of them are missing their heads. The archaeologists also found a lot of well-preserved bronze weaponry, as well as gold, stone and bronze decorations, inside Pit 3. A distinctive chariot equipped with four horses was discovered inside the chamber of the pit.
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/terra_cotta_army/pit_3.htm

It doesn't really take that long to do the Terracotta Warriors museum.  If you want to speed things up a bit, you could hire a driver, or get a taxi, instead of the public bus.  Obviously that would cost you more.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Other Xi'An Links:

1) Mt Hua Shan - Up the West Peak
2) Longmen Grottos - from Xi'An to Luoyang Longmen
3) Sheraton Xi'An North Hotel - Club Room and Executive Lounge
4) China Eastern Airlines Business Class Singapore to Shanghai to Xi'An Adventure!
5) China Eastern Airlines Business Class Shanghai to Singapore Flight Review