After some well deserved sleep after the Cantus Scintillae of last night, we had to make sure to be fresh and ready at thirteen hundred hours the next day in order to get to the bus that would bring us to the next cultural destination.

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Before that however, me and three others went to the the far east of China in order to get breakfast (two blocks away). As of times before, the people in this (very sketchy) restaurant did not know a single word of English. We, with our four word knowledge of Chinese had also a hard time figuring out what the waiter of the restaurant was trying to tell us. Therefore we decided that it was a good idea to point at the dishes that were pictured on the walls. After some confused faces of the waiter we order four different ones. After receiving our first dish we figured out why the waiter was so confused, the dishes were meant for a grand total of four people and since we ordered four you can imagine what happened (lets just say there was enough).

A failed attempt of finishing the food later we went back to the hotel in order to get to one of UNESCO’s world wonders; the terra cotta army. To get the full cultural tourist experience, a tour guide was also present. This very enthusiastic guide showed us around through the four halls were the army was located in.

The first hall being the most massive. In this hall most of the army was already dug up. The tour guide explained that the rest of the army was still underground in order to preserve the paint that is on the terra cotta soldiers. This paint would fade out if not preserved by some kind of conservation method. According to the guide no such method is currently available so until then these soldiers would remain buried.

After this culture sniffing adventure, the whole of SPOCK went to a restaurant close to the terra cotta army to first taste some tea and afterwards dine together.

Afterwards we went with a rollercoaster bus that was trying to reach its destination in time (which was a lot more exciting than the army to me) to a Chinese theatre show with traditional (and beautiful) costumes, music, and dance. This classic dance was, after the show was finished, also performed by many people on the streets of Xi’an as an evening activity as could be seen through the windows of the bus on the way back to the hotel. With the hotel in sight, we all thanked the bus driver and gave a lot of ‘pingels’ to the tour guided which had this all arranged and went to bed for some more well deserved sleeps.