Photo of Pit 1 of the terracotta army, Xi'an

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We took an overnight train from Shanghai to Xi'an to visit the terracotta army (also called the terracotta warriors). The pits are protected by buildings erected over them. When you enter the building for Pit 1 and see the warriors staring back at you, it's an amazingly powerful sight. This pit has 1,100 warriors, which have been reassembled and put in their original standing positions. Behind them, you can see the warriors as they are when they are first uncovered: broken and lying in the earth. Towards the back of the hall is the hospital where the warriors are reassembled and glued together. Excavation and restoration work continues, and only a small proportion of all the buried warriors have been uncovered in the years since their discovery in 1974.

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