The hook
An entire army of life-size clay soldiers, thousands of them, each with a different face, buried in battle formation to guard a first emperor's tomb and forgotten for two thousand years until a farmer digging a well hit one.
01Why it's worth it
When the man who first unified China died in 210 BC, he was buried with an army to protect him in the afterlife: thousands of life-size terracotta soldiers, archers, charioteers, and horses, drawn up in ranks in underground pits, each figure individually modelled so no two faces are quite alike, and originally painted. It lay unknown until 1974, when farmers digging a well broke into it, and excavation has continued ever since, so you look down into working archaeology, the restored front ranks standing in the largest pit under a hangar, broken figures being pieced back together behind them. The nearby unexcavated tomb mound of the emperor himself is said to hide even more. Xi'an, once the eastern end of the Silk Road, is a worthy base with its own walls and Muslim quarter.
02How to experience it
Go at opening to see the main pit before it fills, and take a guide or good audio to make sense of the ranks and the history. See all three pits, including the smaller ones with the finer figures. Stay in Xi'an for its intact city walls and the food of the Muslim quarter.
From the locals
Xi'an sits at the centre of the argument about China's classic route. One traveller urges skipping it — the big cities are "not that different from those in the rest of the world," and "by far the most interesting stuff lies in between." Another rejects that outright for first-timers: "if you have never been to China, going that route would be the best. There is a wealth of cultural history dating back thousands of years in those cities." Both are right depending on which trip this is; if it's your first, the Terracotta Army is not the thing to skip.