The Cave Dwellers of Xian

Billed as a taxi-tour to the Terra Cotta Warriors (the self-proclaimed ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ - quiz question: how many ‘eighth wonders of the world’ are there out there?), in truth, the most fascinating part of the tour came after we had left the Terra Cotta Warriors museum, a stop about an hour out of Xian.

Now this stop was one of those ‘foreign tourist’ moments, without question – but certainly not a typical one. To experience it, we had to accept we could only be intrusive voyeurs, briefly looking upon a life so far removed from our own – yet so damn fascinating the situation had to be accepted at face value. There was no way we belonged up there on that hillside. Worse still, aside from a pack of cigarettes and a few candies and balloons for the local kids, there was basically no benefit to the local villagers, particularly the one kind enough to show us his cave – his home. Only mutual fascination we each shared.

As we left the village, our tour guide Clarence Guo, showed us an article in Time Magazine in which his original cave tour was featured – proving that word of mouth does travel far. Guo is the only tour guide who takes tourists to these cave dwellings – he discovered them by accident some years back when he was taking tourists to see a nearby village.

We had heard about his tour some days earlier (through a friend of a friend), but assumed there would be numerous tours taking tourists to these cave dwellings. After searching the Internet then talking to a couple local tour guides, we realised that indeed this cave dwelling tour was something unique – so we called up Clarence and booked immediately for the next day.

Set on a cliff so compelling those living there probably had long forgotten how fortunate they were to have such a site to look out onto each and every day.

An earlier cave, now apparently uninhabited...