The terracotta army was at the top of our list when we arrived in Xi’an. Can you imagine more than 8,000 life-size soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, all different and all made of terracotta?

Yeah, neither did I.

We couldn’t even picture how to get there.

The armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, were buried with him to protect him in his afterlife. And since even in 210–209 BCE no one was crazy enough to be actually buried with the emperor, 700,000 conscripted workers recreated an entire army with terracotta.

The whole necropolis is about 98 square kilometres, a microcosm of the emperor’s palace. The long colones of warriors stand guard to the east of the tomb, and each of them has different features.

It’s insane, and we really wanted to go.

Our best option was a long subway trip—line 1 to Fangzhicheng (纺织城站), then line 9 to Huaqingchi Station (华清池站). Then hopefully, there would be a bus or taxis for the last few kilometres.

The big dilemma was the tickets. Should we book ahead and maybe not make it to the mausoleum site or hope that same-day entry tickets will be available at the site? I tried to buy the ticket on WeChat but we had to enter a Chinese ID card number. Alright, problem solved—we decided to chance it.

It was a long 90-minute trip but we made it to the mausoleum. We took a taxi from the subway station to the site and yes, we were able to buy tickets in person using our passports. Mission accomplished!

Once inside the huge park, we started with the third pit, the less impressive one from a visitor’s perspective because excavation work is still underway. Then we moved on to the second and first pits for the “wow!” factor.

The armies are truly impressive. The pits are bigger and deeper than I thought as well.

This is probably the one major site where we didn’t take pictures of us. It was extremely hot and crowded, we could barely move around!