THE CHINESE MARKET - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 241

Lin Xi the age of the hotel, wondering whether it was built in the nineteenth or twentieth
century. “It was built in 2005,” she said. “This is a history park, not real history.”
The hotel sits at the far end of a 165-acre theme park with extensive gardens and lakes
built to tell the glories of the Tang Dynasty, one of the more sophisticated in Chinese his-
tory—encouraging the arts, refining the civil service examination and allotting farmland
on a relatively equal basis. The history park focused on grand replicas of temples, pavilions
and miniature palaces, all supposedly built in the Tang style. Admission to the park is $14;
those staying in the hotel enter for free. It was a signal example of the tourism industry's
promotion of replicas over actual historic buildings, a Chinese take on the Disneyland
model.
The next day we were off to the Terra-Cotta Army of Xian, speeding along an eight-lane
expressway. Lin Xi recited the history of Qin Shi Huang Di, China's first emperor, and
how he ordered the construction of this army to accompany him to heaven. “He strongly
believed in the afterlife and kept his tomb very secret. He had three thousand concubines.
He made his tomb like his life. Two hundred concubines were buried alive with him and
the terra-cotta soldiers.”
We pulled off the main highway and drove past parking lots the size of an American
football field; most were half-full of tour buses. This was the intersection of domestic and
foreign travel writ large. The Chinese government had built the parking lots and an out-
door market of souvenir stores lining the wide path to the terra-cotta pits for the 2 million
people who come each year. We smiled at the hawkers selling miniature statues, sheepskin
rugs and nuts wrapped in a cone.
In front of the museum built at the entry of the first pit, Bill turned to Lin Xi and ex-
plained that he was a retired U.S. Army officer and had been looking forward to seeing the
terra-cotta soldiers for years. He told her he wanted to study the statues for their “tactical
formation and the integration of combined arms.” She smiled and walked us through.
This first emperor of Qin, or China, unified much of the country in 221 B.C . with ex-
traordinary military aplomb. The pits holding his eternal army held clues to how he won
battle after battle. Clay soldiers are lined up in trenches, each with individual faces and
positioned according to rank. Bill explained to me how one could read the sophistication
of the army by the arrangements in battle formations that clearly showed the tactics of the
day. Foot soldiers were followed by cavalry and then charioteers—these were pulled by
clay horses lined up four abreast. Bill paced the perimeter of each of the three pits, mar-
veling at the details, pointing out the flank security on both sides and taking photograph
after photograph so he could study the soldiers at leisure when we got home.
Lin Xi was growing impatient. She drew alongside me and said it was time to leave. We
would be late for lunch. “Could you please ask your husband to follow me?”
I walked over and told Bill our time was up. He went over to Lin Xi and told her in
the gentlest terms that he would happily skip whatever else she had planned so he could