I want to start this post with a question: do you know what the Terracotta Warriors are? I hope you do, because the Chinese certainly do not. Why, do you ask, do they not know one of the most visited sites in China? Well, let me tell you, because there are no Terracotta Warriors in China! Their real name is Bingma Yong and that’s what the Chinese know them as. We, westerners, have decided that it’s totally cool to rename famous places in other countries to whatever we want to call them. Interesting right? Thankfully, we found this out early in our getting-lost-on-the-way-to-the- Bingma Yong -warriors day. Otherwise, it might have turned in to we-got-so-lost-that-we-never-made-it-to-the- Bingma Yong -warriors day.
Fun Fact, the Chinese will never give you more information than you ask for. For example, we asked the front desk lady of our hostel which buses we should take to get to the Bingma Yong warriors. Our reply was take the 603 to the end, walk over here (points on map), and take but 306 to the warriors. Sounds simple enough but we genius forgot to ask a few clarifying questions such as “how far do we walk to find the 306 bus”. Well, after actually doing it, we found out that walking 20 minutes in one direction was not what we were supposed to do. We ended up in this little plaza that had a bank, market, and a bus stop for every bus but the one we were looking for. With nothing to do but go back, we start slowly making our way back to point A to try out our luck again, when a bus with a huge picture of the warriors on it drives by. The conductor waves, stops the bus, and in an awkward way that makes us do the back and forth dance as we try to figure out if he is shooing us or beckoning us, motions us over to get on the bus. Seeing this as (hopefully) a ride to the warriors we were so set on seeing, we hop on the bus after confirming it wasn’t going to cost us and arm and a leg. Once the bus starts moving, we quickly realize there are no more seats on the bus for us and that we are being starred at by every person sitting in the bus. We are the only white people on the whole bus. O joy. The conductor guy manages to squeeze past all of us and produces two teeny tiny chairs for us to sit on in the aisle. With my life being the huge joke that it is sometimes, I laugh and strategically place my tukis on this tiny chair. Brandon, being the good sport that he is, ends up standing for 30 minutes and endures the curious unrelenting stares in his direction.
Turns out we got on the right bus and made it to our final destination. The stars were aligned for us this past weekend. Lesson learned on this leg of the trip: sometimes looking like a lost confused tourist will get you unlost.
