Today was a busy day. Some of us started out day with Ti Chi by the fountain. After breakfast, we visited the Banpo Museum, a site that is over 6000 years old. The museum houses a typical village of that time, discovered in the spring of 1953. Later, after five large-scale digs of excavation organized by Chinese Academy of Sciences, an area of approximate 10,000 square meter was excavated, covering one fifth of the total site area. Among the excavated finds are 45 house sites, 2 penned sites, 6 pottery-making kilns, over 200 storage pits, over 250 burial jars of adults and children, over 1,000 pieces of tools and utensils, as well as thousands of kernels, animal bones and rotten millets, It was very interesting.

We then traveled to an area where we learned about the makings of the terracotta warrior. We learned about the clay, molds firing of the clay and the method for drying and preserving the clay. We bought some souvenirs and headed for the real Terracotta Warriors.

The museum of the Terracotta Warriors was amazing. The warriors were discovered by a framer drilling a well in 1974. The site was excavated and the museum has been built over the site as well as the the village moving around the site to accommodate the museum. The museum is divided into three pits with each pit housing a different type and rank of soldier. We will all be very excited to share our pictures with you about the warriors.

We finished our site seeing by going to the the Qining Underground palace. The palace is situated near the First Emperor's tomb is located. It is an exhibit in miniature of how the city looked at the time. The basement housed a "small world" type display of dolls that are in settings similar to the era including a display of the emperors dragon shaped coffin.


We completed the day by celebrating Sean's birthday after dinner with a beautiful cake and the most awesome birthday candle we had ever seen. Some troopers then went to the University to experience Karaoke Chinese style while the rest of us called it a night.