In the morning, we toured the mausoleum where Emperor Qin Shi Huang was laid to rest over 2,000 years ago. We saw the thousands of life-sized terra cotta warriors, archers, infantrymen and horses that were buried with him; walkways provide a bird’s-eye view of the entire necropolis where the Terra Cotta Army was discovered in the 1970s. Each man and horse is molded with its own distinctive features. 

After lunch in Xian, we flew to Beijing, China’s imperial capital, whose rich history dates back more than 3,000 years .