The Terracotta Army
兵马俑 · Bīngmǎyǒng
Eight thousand life-size soldiers, every face different, found by farmers digging a well in 1974.
Photo: xiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0
In March 1974, during a drought, a group of farmers in Lintong county sank a well and hit fired clay. What they had found was the outer guard of the tomb complex of Qin Shi Huang, the man who unified China in 221 BC, standardised its script, weights and axle widths, and began the Great Wall. He had spent 38 years and, reportedly, 700,000 conscripts building a burial city — and the army was only its perimeter.
There are three excavated pits. Pit 1 is the one you have seen: a hangar the size of an aircraft shed over 6,000 infantry in battle formation, eleven columns deep, still standing where they were placed 2,200 years ago. Pit 2 holds cavalry, archers and chariots in a more complex tactical arrangement, much of it deliberately left unexcavated. Pit 3 is small and was the command post.
The detail is what lands. Every figure is individually modelled — different faces, different hair-knots indicating rank, armour rendered plate by plate, and originally all of it brightly painted in pigments that oxidise and flake within minutes of exposure to air, which is why excavation has been deliberately slowed to a crawl. The emperor's actual tomb mound, 1.5 km west under a hill, has never been opened. Ancient records say it contains a map of the empire with rivers of flowing mercury, and soil tests have found mercury concentrations that are hard to explain any other way.
Why go
- One of the genuinely great archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century, and it is not overstated
- The bronze chariots in the exhibition hall are, technically, more impressive than the warriors themselves
- Xi'an itself — city wall, Muslim Quarter, Tang pagodas — makes an outstanding two-day pairing
- Direct high-speed rail from Beijing (4h30) or Shanghai (6h), so it slots into any itinerary
Highlights
Pit 1
The main hall. Enter, go left and walk to the far end first — the crowd clusters at the entrance viewing platform and thins by two-thirds at the back, where you also get the restoration workshop in view.
Pit 2
Darker, quieter, and holds the five individually cased figures — the kneeling archer, the cavalryman, the general — displayed at eye level. This is where you actually see the faces.
Bronze Chariots exhibition
Two half-scale chariots with 3,000 parts each, gold and silver fittings, and a parasol mechanism that tilts and rotates. Arguably the finest bronzes ever recovered in China.
Qin Shi Huang's tomb mound
A shuttle from the pits, included in the ticket. It is a grassy hill and there is nothing to see, which is precisely the point — the greatest unopened tomb in the world.
Huaqing Palace
Ten minutes away: Tang imperial hot springs, the site of Yang Guifei's bathhouse and of the 1936 Xi'an Incident. A good add-on if you have the afternoon.
Photographs
Getting there & practicalities
Getting there
Tourist bus 5 (306) from Xi'an Railway Station east square, ¥7, about an hour — take the official green bus, not the touts' minibuses. Or metro Line 9 to Huaqing Chi plus a short bus. A taxi is around ¥150.
Tickets
¥120 March–November, ¥90 in winter, covering all three pits, the bronze chariot hall and the tomb mound shuttle. Book online with your passport; same-day walk-up is possible but slow.
Opening hours
08:30–18:00 (last entry 16:30) in the warm season; 08:30–17:30 in winter.
Best time of day
Arrive at opening or after 15:30. Midday is the worst two hours of the day here.
What everyone gets wrong
- Do Pit 2 and 3 first, then Pit 1 — everyone else does the reverse, and you will have the small pits to yourself.
- Hire a licensed guide at the entrance (¥100–150) or download a good audio guide. Unexplained, the pits are just rows of statues.
- Ignore anyone approaching you at Xi'an station offering a tour. The official bus queue is on the east square, clearly marked.
- The site is huge and mostly outdoors between halls; in July it regularly passes 38°C.
- There is a full-size replica pit at a nearby 'museum' run by touts. The real site is the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum.
What to eat
- Save your appetite for Xi'an's Muslim Quarter that evening — roujiamo, biangbiang noodles, lamb paomo
- Persimmon cakes (shizi bing) from the stalls outside the site are the one decent thing sold there
→Combine it with
