Monday, January 19, 2009

Army Men

The great thing about visiting China is that every touristy thing you'd ever want to see is conveniently located in Beijing. All except the Terracotta Army, those are in Xi'an (pronounced She-an). We made two trips to Xi'an to see the army/soldiers and Ayi went with us both times. Part of the tour is a movie where they reenact the soldiers being made and then destroyed (or how they think they were made and destroyed...they date back to 210 BC and the Chinese didn't even know they existed until 1974 when a farmer accidentally discovered them). JR always got super excited about the movie and would say "Bīngmǎ Yǒng! Bīngmǎ Yǒng!" (which to me sounds like Be-I-Own) everytime he would see one. If you've ever been to our house, you know we even have a 3ft. one standing outside our front door. Knowing how much JR liked the Bīngmǎ Yǒng, Ayi brought him 4 soldiers that he could "excavate" himself. It's actually quite cute. I took pictures of the excavation process, and now JR is the proud owner of 4 more Bīngmǎ Yǒng(s) to add to his collection.

Each solider is "buried" in it's own block.


Add some water...and get to work


Keep "digging"


Brush him completely clean

Another soldier "discovered"! (I know it's hard to see since everything in the picture is brown, the soldier is sitting on the counter to your left.)

3 comments:

Mendi said...

We have probably the same 3 foot tall "army man" on our mantle! A must-have for Chinese tourist(or residents). Glad you're having such a great visit! Now you need to figure out how you can get her to stay! :-)

Anonymous said...

What fun for JR - now he can ad archaeology to his list of accomplisments! I know he is having a blast.
GS

Anonymous said...

I can see all that snow out of your kitchen window! MR