[Vlog] Xi'an 西安: Visit China's Ancient Capital and the Terracotta Army

Some cities show you modern China. Xi'an helps you understand how China became China. Before Beijing became the political capital and Shanghai emerged as a global economic center, there was Chang'an, today's Xi'an.

For centuries, it was one of the great capitals of Chinese civilization. It was from this region that China's first emperor unified the country more than 2,200 years ago. Later, Chang'an became one of the world's great cosmopolitan cities and the eastern gateway of the Silk Road. This makes Xi'an much more than a destination for ancient monuments.

It is a city about unification, connection, and exchange, three ideas that continue to resonate in China today.

The most spectacular place to begin is, of course, the Terracotta Army. Thousands of life-sized warriors were created to accompany Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China, into the afterlife. Seeing them in person changes your perception of the site. The astonishing part is not simply their number or their individual faces. It is the scale of organization behind them. More than two millennia ago, producing this underground army required enormous coordination of labor, materials, craftsmanship, transportation, standardized production, and engineering.

The Terracotta Army therefore tells us something fundamental about the emergence of the Chinese state: the ability to organize people, resources, infrastructure, and territory at an extraordinary scale.

That capacity for scale is something I repeatedly encounter while traveling through China today. But Xi'an tells another, almost opposite, story too. If the Qin period represents unification, the Silk Road represents connection. During the Han and particularly the Tang era, Chang'an developed into one of the great international cities of its time. Merchants, diplomats, monks, scholars, and travelers arrived from across Asia. Silk traveled westward, but goods were only one part of the story.

Religions crossed borders. Knowledge traveled. Technologies circulated. Food changed. Architecture absorbed influences. People met people.

You can still experience traces of these exchanges today. At the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, the story of the monk Xuanzang and his journey to India reminds us how knowledge traveled across civilizations. In the Muslim Quarter and Great Mosque, another layer of Xi'an's international history becomes visible. Chinese and Islamic traditions have interacted here for centuries, producing an architectural and cultural landscape unlike almost anywhere else.

And above the historic center stands the Ancient City Wall, allowing you to look simultaneously at the old city and the modern metropolis surrounding it. For me, that view captures Xi'an perfectly.

Ancient China is not hidden underneath the modern city. The two remain visible together.

And then the story takes an unexpected turn. More than two thousand years after the ancient Silk Road connected Chang'an with Central Asia and lands farther west, the language of the Silk Road returned to China's international strategy.

In 2013, China proposed the Silk Road Economic Belt, followed by the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. The concept was initially known widely as One Belt, One Road. Today, we know it as the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. This makes visiting Xi'an particularly meaningful.

The ancient Silk Road was not a single road, and today's Belt and Road is not simply its modern reconstruction. They belong to completely different historical and geopolitical contexts. But the historical reference matters. Xi'an gives that reference a physical geography.

Where caravans once departed Chang'an toward Central Asia, freight trains now leave Xi'an through modern Eurasian rail corridors. Camels became trains. Caravan routes became logistics networks. Journeys measured in months can now be measured in days. Yet an old geographical question remains remarkably relevant:

How does China connect its vast interior with the wider world?

This is one of the reasons Xi'an has become one of the most meaningful stops in my Year of China. The purpose of this journey is not simply to visit China. It is to learn about China through its cities. Each city reveals a different layer. Some explain China's extraordinary urbanization. Others reveal its scientific and technological ambitions. Others help explain its political history, architecture, infrastructure, or relationship with the world. Xi'an takes the story back more than two millennia. And as an architect and researcher in sustainable buildings and cities, another question interests me here.

How does a city carrying thousands of years of history continue to modernize?

Xi'an must simultaneously protect archaeological heritage and historic urban fabric while accommodating metropolitan growth, mass tourism, universities, metro systems, high-speed rail, new industries, housing, and infrastructure. That tension is visible everywhere. The ancient wall and the expanding metropolis. The pagoda and the skyline. The old market and the metro. The caravan and the freight train.

Xi'an shows that modernization is not always a process of leaving history behind. Sometimes history becomes part of the language through which the future is imagined.

That may be the most important lesson I take from this city. From Qin Shi Huang and the first unification of China, to the cosmopolitan Tang capital of Chang'an, from the Terracotta Army to the Silk Road, and from ancient caravans to today's Belt and Road, Xi'an connects several chapters of China's story that at first appear separated by centuries.

Throughout this Year of China, I will continue sharing the cities, universities, infrastructure, institutions, and people that are helping me better understand the country's transformation. Because after several years of traveling through China, one thing has become increasingly clear to me:

To understand China's future, you also have to understand the historical ideas China carries into that future.

Xi'an is one of the best places to start.

What can the ancient Silk Road teach us about the way China understands connectivity today?

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