Trouble in Xi'an

It seemed fitting to draw our China adventure to a close, as it began: with a visit to the Terracotta Warriors. A year ago we scraped in at the last minute to see the exhibition at the British Museum of 20 or so of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi’s terracotta army. The remarkable figures made such an impression on us that we promised the boys we’d see The Real Thing during our stay in Hong Kong.

The news that we were leaving gave the trip an added sense of urgency and we booked a trip to Xi’an for our penultimate weekend in Hong Kong. That was of course before anyone had really heard of swine flu.

On the plane we were required to fill in entry forms and health declaration forms. They hadn’t given me enough so I went in search of the stewardess. “May I have three more health declaration forms please?” I asked.
“We’ll be landing in 14 minutes.” came the reply. Oh, roll on my return to a country where I’m understood some time before the 37th time of asking.

Our temperatures were taken on the flight. When we landed we were kept waiting in our seats for half an hour before a medical inspection team arrived to take temperatures for a second time, this time in the ear, a slow business as the sterile cover needed replacing for each passenger. Rather unnervingly the whole process was filmed by a security official. Again our temperatures were normal but I grew concerned when a stewardess approached and questioned me because our daughter had been coughing during the flight.

It was true. She had had a cough and I’d taken both her and her five year old brother to be examined just a week before. He’d had bronchitis. She’d had slight cough but not swine flu. They both got better and then she got conjunctivitis so we were back a few days later. Again no swine flu. Indeed that very morning she’d split her lip and we’d been up to the Adventist Hospital where again she’d been screened. Still no swine flu.

I was keen to impress upon the stewardess that there was no cause for concern. It was just a residual cough but nothing infectious. In fact our daughter had noticed the stewardesses looking at her and had even hammed it up a bit. She was, I assured them, perfectly healthy. The stewardess appeared to be satisfied. Queuing in the airport, however, my husband, with our daughter in his arms, was hauled out and told to take a seat to one side. We followed and sat with him, feeling dejected. It was already after 9pm.

A medical officer in full body armour and a fierce looking security guard were sent to interview us. Talking at us from behind her mask I could not hear the questions. “I can’t understand you with that mask on, can you take it off please?” I began in an irritated tone. “Careful,” urged my diplomatic husband, “Now’s not the time to rile them.”

We felt like social pariahs. People were starting to stare. They took the three year olds temperature for a third time but wouldn’t tell us the result. They asked us why she was coughing. We explained repeatedly. They disappeared to consult one another. They asked us for evidence of our visits to the doctor and the hospital. We had none. They consulted again. And then they announced they’d like to place her under observation in hospital for two hours. It was almost 10pm and our hearts sank. We begged for mercy. We appealed to their common sense. The medical officer was moved but her more bureaucratic male colleague was not.

“We’re only here for one day,” we explained, “We would never have brought her had she been ill, please don’t do this to us!” I think they suspected us of having filled up our daughter with Calpol to mask a higher than normal temperature and they expected to see her temperature sore as the medicine wore off. Instead, after much grovelling they allowed us in on condition that we phoned the medical officer to report on our daughter’s condition the following day. We agreed, feeling we’d escaped lightly.

We reached the hotel at 11pm and the boys decided, as we finally got ready for bed, that this was the moment to start a fight. Kept away from school by the A H1N1 virus and kept sitting on an aeroplane for far too long they started an argument about which beds they were all sleeping in. Fidgety and argumentative since we’d left home, the bed incident was the final straw. There were tantrums, rages, sulks and ganging up on the youngest brother. It took ages to settle and in the end my husband slept in the boys’ room to keep them from further acts of aggression.

Saturday was our much anticipated trip to the Warriors. We were short of sleep and in bad humour and not inclined to be tolerant of our children. At breakfast a charming American complemented me on my four beautifully behaved children. I thanked him and joked about selling him all four. To make matters worse, I’d woken with a raging eye infection that left me blinded by Xi’an’s glaring sunshine and a UTI which kept me running in search of China’s ghastly loos throughout the day.

The Warriors were breathtaking and despite the sensation of the British Museum’s own beautiful exhibition it was the sheer size and volume of the 1974 discovery that took our breath away. One of the four farmers who discovered the first terracotta remains as they were digging a well is still living and sits inside one of the great halls signing books about the Terracotta Army. And by sheer coincidence, the Powers That Be in China had chosen that very day, June 13th 2009, to restart excavations on Pit One for the first time in 24 years. The Press were there and we even saw the archaeologists at work. Conveniently a terracotta head had already been unearthed. I was sceptical. It seemed like quick work for a morning and was inclined to think it had been planted for the Press.

It seems that quarter of a century ago the Chinese did not have the technology to preserve the soldiers’ paint as they were removed from their 2,200 year old tomb. The paintwork faded within weeks and in the end they stopped their dig and covered up parts of Pit One, only a fifth of which has ever been excavated. Thousands more of the terracotta soldiers are believed to be underground. Since then technology has been developed in Bavaria to preserve the ancient paint of the underground warriors as they come to light so work can now resume.

I was struck by the sophistication of Xi’an’s civilisation. The warriors were constructed 200 years B.C. at a time when we were still living in caves. Evidence of chromium plating technology has been found on the bronze weapons unearthed from Emperor Shihuangdi’s tomb, technology that was first used in Europe by the Germans during the Second World War.

Returning through the airport on Sunday, it seemed that the sights of Xi’an had not been enough to quell the general restlessness. In their experience, not ours, airports are a great place for boys to run, play-fight, kick-box, swing from barriers, shin up poles, clamber on ledges and run the wrong way up escalators. What else can a younger sister do but copy?

Just as we queued for security our little girl spotted a climbing opportunity too good to miss. A wooden stand was set up full of bottles, both glass and plastic, displaying examples of liquids that had not been allowed through security. In the twinkling of an eye the three year old slipped off to scale the stand. Just too late I turned to watch in slow motion horror as, hanging from the top, she tipped the whole thing down on top of herself, pinning her body to the ground where she lay wailing in a puddle of broken glass, cherry brandy, beer and Cointreau. To add to the spectacle of our humiliation the whole scene and my subsequent fury was only observed by hundreds of fascinated Chinese as they too queued for security. at that moment, I rather wished I’d given them to the American gentleman after all.