Besides the Great Wall, the next most anticipated tour was the tour of the Terra Cotta warriors. These soldiers were constructed and buried around 210 B.C. and were to protect the Emperor when he died and went to the next world. They took 37 years and 700,000 workers to build.. The Terra Cotta Soldiers were discovered in 1974 when a farmer was digging an irrigation well. The Chinese government has made it a special project to handle these artifacts in a very special way. The dig is done by Archeologists and they are doing everything they can to preserve the soldiers just like they were when they were first covered up. The main building that you see in most pictures is the 'main' army and is made up of hundreds of units, each lead by a team of horses, then officers and then the regular soldiers; they estimate 8,000 total figures. Each rank of soldier is noted by the hair style; all officers look alike. On the perimeter of the army are rows of archery soldiers to protect the flank of the army. Only one other building has been partially excavated and the decision is not to open any of the other burial sites that they have found with xray equipment. We toured a factory where they make replicas and they are made the same way as the originals, just smaller.