The Xi’an Wall at the East Gate of the city

I am exploring Xi’an’s old quarter where the streets are so narrow that in places I can touch the walls on either side. This was China’s capital for many centuries, during the Han, Sui and Tang dynasties. This was where the starting point of the ancient Silk Road along which goods and ideas as well as traders travelled in long camel caravans, to and fro across the deserts that separate China and the West. Xi’an’s golden age was during the Tang dynasty (618-917) when the city was called Chang’an and it was famous as one of the world’s richest and most cultured cities. No wonder that the pulses of history are coursing through the stones.

It would be unthinkable to miss Xi’an’s most famous inhabitants, the Terracotta Soldiers, the army of clay figures, created to protect China’s first unifier, the emperor Qin Shihuangdi, who ruled from 221-206 BC. I have seen them several times before, but they are still among the wonders of the world, so I set aside a morning for the 38-kilometre expedition.

No one could guess how many more of these clay archers, cavalry and infantrymen remain safely sleeping underground, but some 6,000 have already been excavated and lined up in vast pits for tourists to gaze at. These are not toy soldiers. Discovered by chance in 1974, some people assert that they were modelled on the elite imperial guard, recruited from neighbouring Shandong province, which is famous for the impressive height of its native sons. Be that as it may, the larger-than-lifesize figures are certainly impressive. How on earth did they build and fire kilns large enough to hold these clay figures?

After the Great Wall (planned by Qin Shihuangdi) the Terracotta Army must be among China’s most recognisable icons. Domestic tourists and foreign visitors alike flock to Xi’an to see the soldiers. But few stay long enough to become well acquainted with some of Xi’an’s other sites such as the impressive city walls, which were completed in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). They have been extensively restored in recent years and, if time allows, you can walk almost the full 12 or so kilometres around the perimeter of the ancient city.

I prefer to be at ground level, especially in the older parts of the city. I always enjoy the bustling streets that lead to the Great Mosque. The air is laden with the scent of toasted cumin seed and charcoal-grilled lamb. Stalls groan under the weight of glistening grapes, blushing peaches, melons of all kinds and dried fruits and nuts from the surrounding regions.

Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi province, but if you look at the faces, you can see that many of its inhabitants trace their origins to other regions of China and much further afield. The city has welcomed and assimilated outsiders for centuries. The most recent wave of immigrants arrived in the 1950s when entire factories and their workers were moved en bloc to Xi’an in an effort to boost the local economy. This region is known for its film studios, for electrical and electronic items and for aviation spare parts. It is also famous for the wide variety of its food. Tang imperial cuisine has been extended by dishes from all parts of China and beyond, while the local dumplings are surely the best and the most varied anywhere in China.

By the Tang dynasty the city had a huge foreign community including over 100,000 traders from the Middle East. Even today Xi’an still has over 30,000 practising Muslims. The Great Mosque dates back to the Tang dynasty when the Han people built it to make the Muslim traders feel at home. Despite its grandiose name, it is on an intimate scale with small weathered pavilions and brick walls inscribed with texts from the Koran, all set in a rose-scented garden. The faithful, wearing freshly laundered white caps, are hurrying towards the only sizeable building, the prayer hall located at one end of the garden. The mosque is not on the main tourist circuit and very few outsiders spend time here, but it is one of the world’s great locations for reflection on the glories of times past.

The Shaanxi provincial museum is a treasure house of excavated items from this region. Admission, formerly very expensive, is now free and it seems that everyone is taking photographs with their mobile phones today. But if I wait a few moments, these eager snappers soon move along and I can enjoy my favourite pieces relatively undisturbed. The craftsmen of the past infused their work with a rare exuberance and energy. I pause to admire the pottery acrobats that have bounced their way through thousands of years. A set of exquisite dragons made of fine gold wire are even older. I admire the skill that has produced a gold-embellished drinking cup of horn, shaped like a buffalo. A long-necked pottery ewer with twin dragons as handles is among the many exhibits that stay in my memory from one visit to the next. I linger alongside the massive Buddha surrounded by a wall of smaller images.

Tang dynasty Chang’an was a cosmopolitan city, aware of the outside world and its ideas. One of China’s most famous characters, the monk Xuan Zang, travelled to India in the year 628 to bring back Buddhist scriptures. He lived out his days at the Ci’en monastery, now best known for its impressive Wild Goose Pagoda. In Tang times there were more than 150 monasteries and nunneries in this region of Shaanxi and many characteristic yellow brick pagodas tower over the neighbouring countryside.

New finds continue to come to light. As recently as the late 1980s, unusually heavy rain damaged the foundations of the Famen Pagoda, only about 100 kilometres from the capital. Remedial building work revealed a hidden crypt beneath the pagoda. It contained a set of exquisite caskets of gold, silver, crystal, jade, pearls and sandalwood, the smallest of which contained a fragment of the Buddha’s finger bone. The pagoda has now been fully renovated and its superb treasures are all on display.

One special excavation site, the Neolithic village of Ban Po in the outskirts of modern Xi’an, has been turned into a 10,000-square-metre museum that gives a vivid experience of what life must have been like some 7,000 years ago. Exhibits include sophisticated pottery, some of it decorated, and finely crafted tools. The entire village is so extensive that archaeologists are still working on much of it.

In the meantime, who knows what secrets are still buried in the countryside? Wherever you go you can spot the conspicuous symmetrical mounds of unopened Qin dynasty tombs. Even Qinshihuang’s tomb, near his Terracotta Army, remains sealed; its lavish pearl decorations and rivers of mercury are known only from contemporary descriptions.