My little army

For the want of anything else to photograph today, I thought I'd blip my warriors - which turned out to be more difficult than I'd anticipated. They just wouldn't stand still................

Last year we were fortunate enough to be able to visit the "Terracotta Warriors" which are about 20 miles from the city of Xian, China. The correct name for the site is "Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum Site Museum".

It is an astonishing place to visit, and I have never seen a photo that does it justice. The warriors are over 2,200 years old. They are fully man-sized or actually larger, as the standing ones must be about 2 metres tall. There are also horses and chariots, and there is a lot of work still on-going, as they believe that the majority of the figures have not yet been uncovered.

The figures were first discovered in 1974 by a local family who kept unearthing various bits of terracotta when they were working on the land. One of the brothers, who is now quite elderly, was at the museum when we were there. He sits now in the museum shop, smiling and talking to visitors and signing souvenirs.

We bought these little figures at the museum, and also one larger one which stands about a foot tall and was pretty heavy to bring back - especially to get it home in one piece!