China Dispatch: The Terracotta Army and a Vegas moment
Posted on October 27, 2009 at 6:30 am
We took a two-hour flight to the next stop on our trip, Xi’an (pronounced ‘she-on’), which was once the capital of China. It is a beautiful old city with an inner city surrounded by an 8.5-mile, 40-foot-high brick wall with gates that close each evening.
We had another day of meetings with local city officials and business leaders. A health care exchange group that includes David Osborn from Vanderbilt had traveled to Xi’an in June to visit some rural hospitals and take part in a wide-ranging knowledge exchange.
After long days of meetings, they would go sing karaoke. When David asked his hosts if they knew any country music, they immediately said, “Yes, John Denver and Garth Brooks.” Without debating whether John Denver was country or not, David sang his best “Rocky Mountain High.” I’m thinking that when Garth gets done with his Vegas stint he can take his show to Shanghai.
On Saturday, we traveled about an hour out of Xi’an to visit the Terracotta Army. The site was discovered in 1974 when a peasant digging a well on his farm stumbled on a 2,000-year-old buried collection of life-size statues. Oddly enough, the peasant was there signing books when we visited, but wouldn’t allow photos to be taken.
The same Emperor who had constructed the Great Wall had 700,000 people build an army to protect him in his afterlife. (Talk about an incredible case of narcissism.) After taking 35 years to construct, the 8,000-plus soldiers were destroyed the year after he died and have been buried ever since. The emperor’s tomb still sits under a massive hill and authorities have not started to exhume his mausoleum.
When we returned to town, a few of the wives who have joined us wanted to get foot massages. The guys tried to wiggle out of it until we heard that they serve cold beer during the massage. We reluctantly joined them and soon learned that a foot massage actually includes the entire body. They provided us with prison-like shirts and shorts, which ignited 90 minutes of laughs as we all sat in the same room wondering how the guys would explain this back home.
While it is apparently very common for men to get ‘foot’ massages, I agreed not to expose any names here. After all, what happens in Xi’an stays in Xi’an.
