Day 2

Visited Shanxi Provincial Museum in the morning. It was a truly eye-opening experience as the exhibits in the museums are mostly relevant to the ancient silk road. I managed to get a better idea of the extent of the silk road based on the map shown inside on of the galleries and also have a better idea of the mode of transport, goods being exchanged between countries and etc. In the afternoon, we visited the terracotta warriors. It's truly amazing to see the number of terracotta warriors in one of the pits and to be told that there are 600 more pits just like that :O However, I felt that Qin Shi Huang's overemphasis on building his tomb might have cost his empire's downfall since it would have taken a lot of resources and manpower which he could have spent on bettering his kingdom. The killing of all the architects and workers after they finished constructing his tomb made me realise how ruthless he is despite being the first person to unite China.