Just in case your next tourist destination is Xi’an, make sure you get a certified tour book and check your list of “places I would like to visit” with the authorities or you just might end up staring at the fake tourist attractions. 

Thanks to authorities, one such fake tourist sites has been raided. The tourist attraction was tricking people into visiting a fake terracotta army. The façade was kept up by unlicensed guides and illegal taxis who enticed unsuspecting tourists to the site.

The site was located in the Lintong district of Xi'an, the same area as the real Terracotta Army, which guards Emperor Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum. The fake site housed forty statues which were destroyed in the operation after an online complaint on Weibo reached local officials. 

Pictures of the raid, which included remnants of the smashed fake Terracotta Army after they had been destroyed, were shared by Lintong council's Weibo account.

The real Terracotta Army is a vast collection of over 8,000 pale-colored, heavily armoured sculpted warriors, complete with 130 chariots of 520 horses and a further 150 cavalry horses in three pits. The figurines also include other non-army figures such as acrobats and musicians so that even in the afterlife the emperor was prepared to live an affluent life.

Discovered by accident by farmers in Lintong in 1974, the figures are displayed in an aircraft hangar-like museum in Xi’an. The Qin Dynasty (221-206) which began more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China was founded by Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇). Each figure is unique according to rank and inpidual standing position with the tallest being the soldiers.

Some historians are of the opinion that the site may have been a site for military training and not the crypt it is widely thought to be. Well, whatever the case may be, business just turned sour for some people and now the real Terracotta Army can get the attention they rightfully deserve from tourists. 

Sources: BBC, China Daily