The government bus left Xi’an behind and wandered through apartment blocks and warehouses before stopping in a parking lot.
Noodle-makers stood in endless rows, in front of every shop and lining every street. Dressed in crisp uniforms of black-and-white. Their coats buttoned, their white paper caps tall and stiff against the cold. They all faced north, their faces solemn.
Before each sat a drum faced with stretched hide, and in their hands they carried a wad of dough. They pulled it like taffy between their palms, swung it in a circle, then slammed it against the drum with a crack.
The dough bounced.
Their hands followed.
Stretch. Swing. Slam.
Stretch. Swing. Slam.
The rhythm rolled down the street—their sound reaching us before the motion.
Stretch. Swing. Slam.
Stretch. Swing. Slam.
I looked at my wife.
“This can’t be it.”
Next to us, the other passengers stepped off the bus, turned right, and disappeared into a line of shrubs.
Dani watched them.
“Should we follow them?”
I looked at the traffic—at the drummers and the rainy street, and shrugged.
“I guess so.”
~
Beyond the bushes, the world opened.
A plaza stretched toward a low white building, then farther still toward exhibition halls large enough to shelter aircraft. Fifty ticket gates stood across the entrance, each staffed by several attendants. Tourist buses kept arriving and emptying into the parking lot.
We walked toward the gates.
We had gone only a short distance when I felt a tug at my sleeve.
I turned.
An old man held a wooden box.
He opened it.
Inside, rows of tiny terracotta horses and soldiers sat in their places.
“Fifty yuan.”
He snapped the box shut.
We kept walking.
A hundred meters later, I felt another tug.
I turned.
The same man.
He opened the box again.
“Fifty yuan.”
Dani looked at me.
We walked on.
A little farther down the road, the tug came again.
I turned.
The box opened.
The same little horses. The same soldiers.
“Fifty yuan.”
We kept walking toward the gates.
~
At the first pit, thousands of soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder across the excavated earth. From the railing, they seemed to continue beyond the edges of the building, rank after rank disappearing into the distance.
I raised my camera.
The viewfinder filled with soldiers.
I backed up and tried again.
Still soldiers.
I lowered the camera and looked over the railing.
Dani stood beside me.
We moved on.
At the second pit, horse teams stood beside chariots. Cavalry stood apart from infantry. Some of the trenches were still filled with earth.
Under portable purple lights, archaeologists worked below us.
One knelt beside a figure, brushing dirt away with a small tool. Another worked several rows over.
We watched for a while as their hands moved through the dirt.
At the third pit, the crowds had thinned.
There were fewer soldiers. Broken figures lay among fragments of buildings. In the middle of the pit, we could see what looked like a command center.
I leaned over the railing.
A face lay broken in the dirt.
We stayed there a moment.
Then we turned toward the exit.
~
Only then did we see how many people had arrived behind us.
The railing was full.
People stood shoulder to shoulder. More pressed in behind them.
Dani looked back at the path we’d just walked.
“We should go back.”
We tried.
We made it a few steps before the crowd stopped us.
We turned sideways and pushed through.
At the first pit, there was no space left along the railing.
I looked up.
An observation deck ran around the upper level, already filling with people.
We kept moving.
A fire-exit door stood open ahead of us.
We went through it.
Outside, the air was quiet.
We stood there for a moment.
Behind us, the crowd kept moving.
~
We passed a workshop on the way out.
Half-finished soldiers stood, some wrapped in plastic. Numbered arms and heads waited on shelves.
A worker carried a torso from one table to another.
I stopped beside the doorway.
There were heads without bodies. Arms without soldiers. Bodies without form.
I looked back toward the pits.
Then at the shelves.
I stayed there until Dani had already started walking.
Somewhere outside, beyond the noodle drums, the government bus still waited.