Ladies and Gentlemen - The Beatles !

 Last Saturday, Theresa and I saw the Beatles, as played by four Japanese guys, at a TexMex Bar in Suzhou, China.  Think about that for a second.  There are more bizarre twists in that plot than your average episode of the Twilight Zone  It's only one samurai sword shy of a Quentin Tarantino film.

Zapata's was the venue.  The band really did come from Japan.  These four guys took it seriously too.  The instruments are the same as used by the real Beatles....at least the 1964 incarnation of the band.  The suits and shoes are straight off the Ed Sullivan show.  The haircuts too.  The base player, the ersatz Paul McCartney, he is right-handed but learned to play left-handed in order to look just like Paul.  Each one played his character like a method actor.  Except for the drummer.  Poor Ringo can't get any respect anywhere.

It's a funny thing about English.  People say it is the language of science and global business.  But in truth, it's the language of music, the language of movies, the language of global cool.  Marcelo, an old friend from Brazil, told me he learned to speak English by singing along to Pink Floyd albums until the needles wore the grooves out.  In Strasbourg, people told me how they'd learned English by tuning in the Armed Forces Radio from Germany and singing along to Rock Music of the 60s and 70s.  In China, the best English speakers are the ones who spent their college nights in the KTVs...the karaoke joints...learning the songs of Bon Jovi and Madonna.

In China, more than any other country I've been to, they are rabid consumers of English culture.  The cheapest entertainment comes from American movies and TV shows downloaded from the internet.  DVDs are cheap and the typical Chinese shop has more variety than in most U.S. shops. The Chinese music videos that run on the local version of MTV look and sound exactly like the videos you see in the U.S.....even though the words are in Chinese.

This is not to say that the modern generation is abandoning the culture of China.  Not at all.  But if they have to learn English, then it's a lot more fun to learn it from a Hollywood film than from a language instructor.  The only downside is that folks are left with the impression that, in the U.S., everybody carries a gun, that all corporations are evil, and that the movie Twister is an accurate representation of normal Midwestern weather.

Anyway, the Beatles tribute band was a good time.  They weren't perfect.  The accent was more Kyoto than Liverpool.  (Think: Love Love Me Do).  And a couple of times the guitar playing was rough.  But they were good.  The best Japanese Beatles band I've ever seen in Chinese TexMex bar.

The Han Tombs Tombs of Xi'an

We've been seeing our share of tombs lately.  It started in Nanjing, with the tomb of the first Ming Emperor.  Then our first stop in Xi'an was the terracotta army near the tomb of the first Qin Emperor.  Our last stop in Xi'an was, and the subject of this post is, the tomb of Emperor Liu Qu of the Han Dyanasty.  Things come in threes, they say.

Each of the tombs is, in essence, a big pile of dirt with a dead king underneath.  Originally, the mound would have been shaped like a pyramid.  Weather and gravity have, over the years, rounded off the corners and subtracted from the height.  But if you look at Liu Qu's tomb, in the top photo behind Theresa, you can almost see a pyramid shape in there somewhere.

You have to wonder what led the ancients all over the world to build pyramid tombs and temples.  The Egyptians and Aztecs and Chinese all did it.  Independently they came up with the idea, it seems, since they were on three widely-separated continents.  Was it because these civilizations were founded by the survivors of Atlantis?  Or maybe they were all taught by the same visitors from outer space?

The answer, I think, is much more primitive.   Back in those days, if you were going to bury your king then you were going to bury a lot of good stuff....expensive stuff...in the tomb with him.  A lot of people would like to steal that stuff.  So, the most obvious way to protect the good stuff from the thieves is to pile a bunch of dirt or stones on top of it.  A LOT of dirt and/or stones.  If it takes 20,000 people and several years to pile the stuff up, then it's going take a long time for a few thieves to unpile it.  The math is against them.

And while you're making the pile, why not shape it like a pyramid?  It's attractive to the eye.  And it's probably a lot easier than building a perfectly round cone.  Straight surfaces are easier to manage than curved ones.

China has more tombs than you can shake a stick at, and it's just now getting around to seriously excavating them.  Most of the really good stuff is gone - long stolen by tomb robbers. (The big pile of dirt was a good idea, in theory, but it required guards to come around periodically to chase off the people with shovels.  And the guards eventually got tired of guarding the big mounds of dirt.  Time was on the side of the thieves.)  There is still a lot of good stuff left, though.  Not gold and jewels, but stuff that is priceless in its own way. 

They've started to excavate the tomb by tunneling in from the sides.  For the tourists, they've converted some of the excavations into permanent displays.  (It's actually a very nice underground museum, complete with rest rooms and gift shops.)  The second photo shows one of these excavation pits.  Those aren't bones in the pit, but rather they are the scattered remnants of clay dolls.  Each of the dolls looked to be about two feet high.  The third photo shows them a little more clearly.  An multitude of little, armless, naked people with their farm animals.

Now, the thought of Chinese emperor buried with little naked dolls might sound a bit repulsive and maybe even prosecutable.  But understand that originally all these dolls were fitted with wooden arms, silken clothing, and painted faces.  But nearly 2000 years of being buried under a big pile of dirt has caused the wood to decay, the silk to rot away, and the paint to fade.  At one time, it was a fabulously colored display of the king's happy and prosperous subjects.  The photo immediately above shows a scene of dolls restored to their original specifications.

In the scheme of things, the burial objects of the Han tomb mark a well-evolved level of culture when compared with the ones that came before.  The objects in this tomb are all happy farmers and ordinary citizens.  The Qin Tomb, which came 300 or 400 years before, included a life-sized army of fierce soldiers.  The tombs which came 500 to 1000 years before that are all filled with human bones.   So there you see the arc of civilization....from human sacrifice to military statues to peaceful figurines.

The photo above doesn't come out very well, because of the dim lighting.  (Try clicking on it to enlarge.)  It shows a parade of animals - dogs, sheep, cows, and elephants.  There are thousands of them marching in straight rows.  The emperor must have wanted to have representations of all his subjects, whether beast or human.

Miscellaneous Xi'an

 In the city center of Xi'an, there is a fabulous museum with the finest of artifacts from the area.  The pieces date back thousands of years.  The displays include the most exotic finds from the Qin Dynasty tombs (aka the terracotta warriors) as well as from the Han and Tang dynasties.  Bronze, clay, jade, and gold.  These are things I've seen in National Geographic Magazine, but never expected to see in real life.  In truth, it's just a bunch of old stuff.  But it is really, really, interesting old stuff.

 But forget the old stuff.  One of the more interesting things was our tour guide.  He was a young fellow, maybe 25 year old at most.  We picked him up at the train station and he was with us for the entire two days of our visit to Xi'an.  He was able to tell us the history of all the ancient sites.  But his stories of contemporary times, of his lifetime, were just as interesting. 

 Xi'an is the capital of Shaanxi province, on the loess plains of the Yellow River.  In Shaanxi province, it is estimated that  40 million people live in caves.  Earth-Sheltered-Dwellings would be the more modern term.  But by any definition, these are people living in caves.  Farmers dig the caves into the cliffs and hillsides.  We saw a few of them from the train as it approached Xi'an.

The land around Xi'an is devoid of timber and stone.  In these parts, a dug-out home makes as much sense as does an igloo to an Eskimo.  You make do with what you've got.  So a cave home is not as primitive as it might at first appear. 

Our tour guide was a farmer's son.  He was not originally from Xi'an, but came to the city from the surrounding countryside to go to University.  Once there, he stayed because the economic prospects in Xi'an were better than in his home village.  His degree was in international business.  His hopes are to land a permanent job with an international bank. For now, he seems happy to work as a tour guide for the Western visitors who come to see the terracotta soldiers.

 Our tour guide said he didn't live in a cave, but he had plenty of friends in college who did.  He reassured us that the cave houses these days are fully modern....wired for electricity and Internet.  The floors are no longer dirt, but rather covered in tile and carpet.  But the people are mostly poor....living on an annual income of one or two thousand dollars per year.

 Our tour guide has two brothers.  This made life rather complicated for his parents, given the "one child" policy of China.  The one child policy became law back in the late 1970s.  But at first it was applied only to urban families and it took a while to be rolled out to the rural areas.  Our tour guide was born in the late 1980's as the second son to his parents.  Since they were farmers, they were allowed two children at the time.  A few years later, his third brother was born.  For his parents, this was a big problem.  They were forced to pay a fine of 3000 RMB, about half their annual income.

Our guide said that his father accepted these circumstances with a sense of humor.  He said that when ever his youngest brother was disobedient, his parents would tell him....'it is OK for your older brothers to disobey, since we gave nothing for them.  But you should obey, since we paid good money for you."

 He said that many farmers still have more children than officially allowed.  But to avoid the steep fines, they simply do not report the birth of their children.  (Even though it is legally required to report the births to the local police station.)  In secluded areas, this works out well...for a while.  But the age of 17 or 18 is the time when adolescents have to obtain their national identity cards.  This can be a real problem if your birth was not registered.  These young adults become illegal immigrants in the only country they've ever known.

 Speaking of immigrants, Xi'an has been a magnet for immigrants for 2000 years.  Chang'an, ancient Xi'an, was the largest city in the world and the Eastern terminus of the silk road.  The lure of profits brought many a merchant to town.  In the old days, many of the immigrants were Muslims from Arab lands of Turkey or Iraq.  These Arabs settled in Xi'an and maintained their religious traditions in diaspora. 

In Xi'an today, there is still a Muslim quarter.  The Muslims have lived in Xi'an for several generations, but they still retain their traditions and beliefs. You can recognize the observants by their circular head coverings (for men) and by their scarves (for women).

 The Muslim quarter also gives Xi'an a famous line of cuisine...grilled lamb and mutton and goat.  The rest of China eats pork.  The Muslim restaurants serve up a welcome alternative to the barbecued pork ribs and stewed bacon.

 The photos in this post show a variety of scenes from the Xi'an museum and from the streets of Xi'an itself.  You can see that everybody is hustling.  Even the tricycle taxis, below, are conspiring as they wait for the next client.



The Jade Factory

 Jade is one of those things considered typically Chinese... like silk and kites and fireworks.  And the Chinese do seem to be truly crazy about jade.  Jade has an ancient tradition and a modern addiction.  Along with gold, jade is a favorite purchase for the nouveau riche and the upper-middle-class.  It is a mark of status, a badge of success.  Every Chinese department store dedicates half of the ground floor to jade and gold jewelry.

 Tourists love jade too.  So every major tourist spot has a jade factory nearby to lure the tourists.  The jade factories all have plenty of parking spaces for buses.  It seems that every tour bus is is obligated to stop at a jade factory at least once.   I suspect that is because every tour guide gets an incentive from the jade factory.  Profit sharing, I suspect.

 Our tour bus stopped at a jade factory in Xi'an.  It was a very good one.  The manager gave everyone a tutorial on jade...how to tell the good stuff from the cheap stuff.  Then he showed us the artisans at work....hunched over grinders to carve the stone into intricate works of art.  Then he took us to the showroom, where everything is on display and everything has a price tag.  The showroom was at least 10,000 square feet of display cases.   The photo above shows the jewelry case with its assortment of jade bracelets.  Above that is a display case for shelf pieces - little pieces and big pieces intended for prominent display in ones home.

The piece shown above is rather large....probably 18 inches long by 14 inches high.  The price tag on display was just a shade under 3 million RMB.    The exchange rate is 6.5 RMB per dollar.  That means that you could carry this piece out to the tour bus for a cash payment of approximately $450,000.   I suspect the tour guide would be more than happy to help you carry it....but only after he's settled up for his percentage on the deal.

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is at the center a Buddhist temple complex just to the South of the Xi'an city walls.  The temple dates back to the glory days of ancient Xi'an, then called Chang'an, during the Tang dynasty.  The temple here was founded in the year 652.  Since then, the temple complex has been a special place for the Buddhists of China

Buddhism came to China from India, about 2000 years ago, during the Han dynasty.  The early Chinese Buddhists had to rely upon word-of-mouth to instruct them in their ways.  The foundational texts of the Buddha remained far away in India, written in Sanskrit.

At the start of the Tang Dynasty, about 600 AD or so, a Chinese monk named Xuanzang left his home in Chang'an to travel on a pilgrimage to India.  For 16 years he studied in the best temples there.  When he returned to China, he brought many copies of the original Sanskrit texts, and set about translating them directly into Chinese.  He founded temple and built the first version of the pagoda.  The place has been a holy spot for the Buddhists of China ever since.

 The pagoda stands over 200 feet tall and is made of brick.  In many ways, it looks like the pagoda on Tiger Hill near Suzhou.  The Wild Goose pagoda is better preserved, though.  And just as the Tiger Hill pagoda leans away from vertical, so too does the Wild Goose pagoda.  They both tilt like the leaning tower of Pisa.  It seems the old pagoda builders had a thing or two to learn about building solid foundations.

The Wild Goose pagoda is still an active center of Buddhist faith.  On the day we visited, the temple was filled with golden-robed monks chanting their prayers.  The first and third photos show them seated to the left and the right of the statue of the great Buddha...chanting from their prayer books.  In the third photo, the monk in the foreground has a small hammer in his right hand that he used to strike the cadence on a small, wooden drum. 

The second photo shows the statue of the Buddha at the center of the temple.  Once again, we see the golden robes open at the chest to reveal the swastika.  Surrounding the central statue are smaller ones, and surrounding them are even smaller figures carved as decorations into the walls. The fourth photo shows one of the scenes, typical of the many carved into the wooden paneling. 

An Evening in the Tang Dynasty

Des Moines, Iowa is a nice enough place.  But not too many people include Des Moines on their "bucket list" of places to visit.  Xi'an is, in many ways, a lot like Des Moines, Iowa.  But Xi'an has a 2200 year old army of terracotta soldiers buried in its backyard.  Des Moines can't top that....not even with the World Pork Expo.

Tourism is an industry in Xi'an.  A big industry.  The terracotta army brings people in from all over the world.  Once they've seen the clay soldiers, most of the tourists still have a little time and still have a little money.  And all over Xi'an there are tourist attractions that compete for the visitors' time and money.

 On our Saturday night in Xi'an, our tour group whent to a dinner theater.  The dinner was a noodle and dumpling extravaganza.  (Remember the wheat thing?)  Following the dinner was a performance to highlight traditional Tang Dynasty culture.

 The Tang Dynasty was one of the high points of Chinese history...a bit of a golden age.  It was a period of stability and prosperity.  It was the time of perhaps the biggest gap between the height of civilization in China and the depths of the Dark Ages in the West.  It was a time of silks and music and poetry.  Or so they told us in the after-dinner show. 

 Anyway, the photos here are all from the after-dinner performance.  Whether authentic or not, the performance was a lovely display of colors and music. 

 The top photo is the only one not taken during the performance.  It was taken before, and shows the performers waiting in the lobby to take the stage in the role of palace guards.

The Walls of Xi'an

 After the terracotta soldiers, the next most famous attribute of Xi'an is its city wall.   You can climb to the top, rent a bike, and do laps around it's 8 1/2 mile perimeter.  The wall is almost perfectly preserved.  They've poked some extra holes in it for modern traffic, as the photo below shows.  But other than that, the wall stands unchanged from the time it was built, during the Ming Dynasty around 500 years ago.

But as impressive as these walls may be, they are, in fact, the result of downsizing.  The Xi'an of Ming times was a pale shadow of what the city used to be.  For 1000 years or more, Xi'an was the principal city of China.  Our friend with the Terracotta Soldiers, Qin Shi Huang, started it all when he unified China and made the city his capital back in 221 BC.  It then continued as the imperial city through the Han Dynasty, the Sui Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty.   When the Tang Dynasty collapsed in 907 AD, the power and prosperity moved away from Xi'an. 

Actually, for most of it's history, the city was named Chang'an.  Chang (长) is the word for "long".  An (安) is the word for "peace".  So the city name translates as "long peace"....or more poetically "enduring peace".  For 200 years, during the Han Dynasty, Chang'an was the most populous city in the world.  It lost that distinction to Rome, about the time of the birth of Christ.  Around 600 AD, it regained its standing as the worlds-largest-city and held it through the next 300 years of the Tang Dynasty.  It held over a million people within its walls during that time.

After the Tang empire, the city languished for 600 years, like Rome during the Dark Ages.  In 1500 AD, the Ming Dynasty had been in power for 200 years and was prospering from its imperial center in Beijing.  By 1500 AD, the Ming had already built the Forbidden City and and rebuilt the Great Wall.  The Ming made Chang'an a provincial seat and renamed it as Xi'an.  They rebuilt the city walls, though with an enclosure considerably reduced from the time of the Tang.  The new area of Xi'an was about 10 times smaller than Chang'an was in it's heyday.

By the way, the name Xi'an , given by the Ming, translates as "Western Peace".  I suppose they preferred this name as neither so regal nor ambitious as "enduring peace")

A colleague told me that many cities in China used to have impressive walls.  Many cities retained their walls well into the 20th century.  But many of the walls were pulled down during the Cultural Revolution, in the 1960s and 1970s.  Pulled down because they were symbols of the old culture and old ways.  In any event, the walls of Xi'an escaped that fate. 

The photo above is a view from atop of the walls of Xi'an.  You can see the bikers biking and the strollers strolling.  There is more than enough room for all.  The walls are 40 feet wide, or so,  at the top.  I think it is the only paved structure of this size in China where you do not need to fear for getting run over by a city bus. 

These days, the walls of Xi'an no longer mark the boundaries of the city.  The new Xi'an stretches in all directions beyond the walls.  The population is around 10 million or so and growing.  Growing mostly by migration rather than by reproduction.  The countryside around Xi'an is famously agricultural and notoriously poor.  The sons and daughters of poor farmers come to Xi'an to seek a modern future.  It's the same in Suzhou and Nanjing and every other major city in China. 

Something to Noodle On

Are you a rice person?  Or a wheat person?

 Northern China is the land of wheat eaters.  The South is the land of rice eaters.  The men from the North are taller...two or three inches taller on average when compared to Southern men...because wheat is more nutrient dense.  The people in the South are able to tolerate the summer heat because rice is a cooler, milder food.

Actually, those statements are not completely true.  They are stereotypes.  China as a country covers roughly the same land area as the U.S.  And just as the U.S. has regional differences in food, language, and culture, so does China. Just as Americans (and every other country) loves to stereotype our different regions, so do the Chinese.  The wheat vs. rice stereotype is deeply embedded.  If I had a nickel for every time something was explained as the difference between wheat and rice, then I'd have a few nickels.



Many stereotypes have a nugget of truth in them.  It is true to say that wheat is more important in the Northern diet, especially in Sha'anxi provice where Xi'an is located.  That's because Sha'anxi sits on the high plains of the Yellow River in the contental interior.  Suzhou, in Jiangsu province, sits on coastal delta of the Yangtze River.  Jiangsu is like Mississipi or Louisiana.  Sha'anxi s like Idaho or Iowa.  So it's no surprise that wheat grows better up there.  (Also no surprise that potatoes grow well up there.)  

The most popular way to eat wheat in the North is in the form of noodles.  Xi'an is famous for it's noodles - over 300 types they say.  Knowing that, our trip to Xi'an would not be complete without sampling the local noodles.  (Were you wondering when I would get to the point?)

The photos here were taken in the restaurant at the terracotta warrior museum.  The chefs made the noodles fresh and by hand.  They made several different types, most of which were similar to Western dumplings and spaetzle and cut noodles.  It could have been German cooking.  Stuff like that I've seen in my grandma's kitchen. 

What I've never seen before is the making of long noodles by hand.  The chef starts with a mass of dough, which he kneads until smooth...like any conventional bread recipe.  Where it gets weird is when he starts to pull it like taffy.   Pull the dough to twice its length, then double over and twist back into one short roll.  He did this over and over again about 15 times.  From time to time he would smear the mass of dough with water to adjust the plasticity.  With each pull the dough became more shiny and more like rubber.

Then it became amazing.  He pulled the dough out to twice it's length.  Then he dusted it with flour to keep it from sticking back together.  He folded it in half and had two thick noodles.  He pulled again, dusted, folded, and had four thick noodles.  He pulled, dusted, folded, and had eight, then 16, then 32, then 64, then...

Before you know it, he had countless thin, perfect noodles in his hands.  It was the magic of binary numbers raised to exponential powers.  Stretched as they were to arm's length, they were four or 5 feet long.  The first photo is the taffy-pulling stage.  The second photo shows the individual noodles being pulled.  The third photo is a close-up of his hands, where you can better see the individual noodles.  The bottom photo shows the ultimate fate of his creation.  The noodles were chopped into one foot segments and boiled in a broth of chicken and vegetables.  After five or so minutes of cooking, bowls were filled and served to the tourists.

In the end, it just a bowl of noodle soup.  I wouldn't say it was the best I've ever had.  But the entertainment factor set it apart.  Lunch with a show. 

The Warriors of Xi'an

 In 221BC Rome was a republic, not yet an empire.  Across the Mediterranean to the Southwest, Carthage appointed a young fellow named Hannibal as general of its armies.  Across the Mediterranean to the Southeast, Ptolemy IV had just taken over as pharaoh of Egypt.  In Greece, Phillip V had just taken over as king of all Greece and Macedonia.  In the forests of Gaul and Northern Europe, the future French and Germans and British were happily going about their lives in barbarian tribes.

On the other side of the world, across the Himalayas and the Gobi Desert, a fellow named Ying Zheng unified China for the first time in 221 BC.  China existed as a collection of kingdoms and allied dynasties before him.  He brought it all together at the point of a sword.  He took the name Emperor Qin Shi Huang.  He was the first ruler of the Qin dynasty.

He made Xi'an his capital city.

By all accounts, Emperor Qin was not a pleasant dude.  He was visionary.  The China of today, the one unified nation of the mainland, is a concept largely of his creation.  He centralized the government, unified the coinage, standardized the language, and built the first version of the Great Wall of China.   But he unified the nation as a tyrant and ruled as a tyrant.  He destroyed the history books of all that came before him.  And he used his subjects like beasts of burden.  By accounts, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 died during the building of the Great Wall.

At the same time, he forced another 700,000 people into labor to build his tomb.  He had them build an earthen pyramid that towered above the burial chambers.  The interior was said to be filled with indescribable treasures and lavishly decorated with representations of heaven and earth, including some 100 rivers flowing with liquid mercury.  It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie.

Emperor Qin move into the tomb in 210 BC.  He died while looking for the fountain of youth and his body had to be rushed back to Xi'an for burial.  Almost immediately after his death, the people began to rebel.  In 206BC, the rebellions concluded successfully with the founding of the Han dynasty.  The Mandate of Heaven had passed away from the Qins.  The old Emperor had no progeny remaining to maintain his memory or his tomb.  He was forgotten.  In time, the only evidence for his dynasty was in the written history and the occasional artifact found here or there.

 In 1974, some Chinese farmers were digging a well just outside of Xi'an, near a non-descript earthen mound.  In the process, they dug up some shards of pottery bearing the images of human faces.  Someone told someone who told someone else.  Before long, some university types came to investigate and they started excavations.  With time, they realized they'd found the long-lost necropolis of Emperor Qin.  They'd found the tomb that 700,000 people labored to build.

They found the army of terracotta soldiers.  An army of 8000 to 10,000 fired-clay warriors were crafted to stand guard outside the emperor's tomb.   The army was housed in chambers, covered with timbered roofs and covered again with earth.  Time, and the fires of rebellion, caused the roofs to collapse.  Consequently, much of the terracotta army has been shattered.  What is on display has been pieced together...reconstructed from the shards.

 So, in the preceding photos you can see the excavation pits with the reconstructed warriors.  The photo above shows a typical pit prior to reconstruction.  The warriors are buried in the dirt like shattered porcelain dolls.  They say that the warriors were originally painted in lifelike colors and adorned with paint, cloth, and wooden and metal weapons.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and rust to rust.  All that remains now is the yellow clay.

 The terracotta army of Xi'an has become one of China's top tourist attractions - second only to Beijing with its Forbidden City and its nearby Great Wall.  The Xi'an museum facility is top-notch.  You can walk in the pits amongst the warriors.  You can eat in the restaurants and shop in the gift shops afterwards.  Above is a photo of our tour group...taken in the "Have your picture taken with the warriors in three dimensions" stand.  There were 28 of us expats from Suzhou on the tour.

 Above and below are a couple of the pieces on display in Pit 2.  The piece above is a cavalry soldier with his horse.  The horse is fitted with  bronze halter, bit, and reins.  The soldier walks beside on foot.  Despite their craftsmanship, the Qin workers could not build a terracotta horse with a back strong enough to support a 200 kilo terracotta horseman.  So the horsemen all walked.

Below is the famous kneeling archer....one of the few statues found unbroken.  When originally placed in the tomb, he would have been holding a wooden crossbow.  You can see his right hand still curled around the long-decayed stock of the crossbow.

In the gift shop, you can buy a picture-book memento and have it signed by the farmer who discovered the site while digging the well back in 1974.   His name is Mr. Long and he is about 70 years old.  The story goes that the government, in honor of his historic discovery, is paying him a handsome salary each year...a salary far beyond what a normal farmer could expect to earn.  All he has to do is sign books in the gift shop.   And so he does.  We bought a book for 150 RMB and had it signed by Mr. Long. 

The story of Mr. Long is a good one, but the cynic in me finds it almost too good to be true.  I can't help thinking that every morning, when the workers of the museum gift shop show up for work, the supervisor asks "who wants to be Mr. Long today?"