Day 1 Terracotta Warriors Museum, Huaqing Palace, Song of Ever Lasting Sorrow

13:00: Your local tour expert will meet you at your hotel lobby and accompany you to visit the first destination.

13:50 - 15:30: Following about a 50 minutes drive, you will arrive at the world-famous Terracotta Warriors Museum. This museum is built on the site of the funerary objects of Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum. The tomb is yet to be excavated, but the accompanying Terracotta Warriors and Horses were discovered in 1974 when some farmers were digging wells nearby. A grand underground kingdom has been uncovered ever since. About 8000 human sized warriors with unique facial expressions and ranks were revealed. More objects like arrows, bronze horses, chariots, swords and many other daily things were discovered. Now, the museum is divided mainly in three pits which you will visit.




16:00 - 17:30: Next, you will pay a visit to the Huaqing Palace, aka Huaqing pool. This place has been famous for its hot springs since the olden times and has served as a side royal palace for three millennia. The spring is naturally generated from geothermal heating and was already used about 6000 years ago. Although the preceding dynasties built palaces here as well, the Huaqing Palace built in the Tang Dynasty really spread its fame. It’s precisely in this palace that the love story between Emperor Li Longji and his consort Yang Yuhuan occurred and left us a beautiful love legend. A later rebellion led by An Lushan and Li Siming broke those two love birds, leading to the famous poet Bai Juyi  writing a great poem: Song of Everlasting Sorrow.






    





Huaqing Palace is famous not only because of the love anecdote, but also because it was the place of 1936 Xi’an Incident when two generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng kidnapped then national leader Chiang Kai-shek and forced him to sit down and participate in a joint force against Japanese invaders with the Chinese Communist Party.

18:00-19:00: Have dinner near the Huaqing Palace and be ready for the performance.

20:10 - 21:20: Enjoy the world-famous show Song of Everlasting Sorrow. Through the performance, you can admire how grand the Tang Dynasty court was, how beautiful Lady Yang must have been, and how their story lasts forever.

22:30: You will be dropped off at your hotel.