Phone dropped at Terracotta Warrior museum returned

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The panic of a tourist in fear of not being able to retrieve his mobile phone after dropping it into a pit while visiting the Terracotta Warriors, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, amid the National Day holiday, has turned out to be a false alarm. The mobile device was successfully picked up and returned by the museum just one day after its unexpected fall.

The visitor, who lost hold of the phone and dropped it into one of the three giant pits filled with clay generals, warriors, chariots and horses at the tourist attraction on Wednesday, related his anecdote in a post on the instant messaging app WeChat while expressing concerns as to whether the phone could be retrieved from the heritage reservation.

Another tourist witnessing the dropped phone ridicules the experience on WeChat. /Cnwest.com Photo

“The tour guide told me that once it fell into the pit, it becomes a piece of cultural relics,” the unidentified visitor ridiculed in the post, pointing at tourists’ lack of access to items in the enclosed warrior pit.

Netizens make fun of the visitor's experience. /Weibo screenshot

Since the post went viral online, thousands of netizens have made fun of the visitor’s experience by saying that the photo capturing a modern mobile phone along with the time-honored terracotta figures has conjured up a scene from the popular time travel dramas where protagonists would go back in time to relive in an exotic era in the past.

However, some netizens also extended the same concerns with the visitor while slamming the museum for not being able to return the phone immediately.

According to a staff member surnamed Liu from the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum, the phone was already given back to the owner on Thursday, just one day after it had been accidentally left at the scenic spot.

Due to the massive influx of tourists amid the National Day holiday’s travel boom, staff members were not able to pick the phone up until the museum closed on Wednesday, Liu told Beijing Youth Daily, addressing why the phone was not sent back to the owner the same day it was dropped.

Liu also urged visitors at the site to take care of their personal belongings in case the falling items bring possible damage to the cultural relics, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The Terracotta Warriors / Photo from the official website of the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum

A UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the eight wonders of the world, the terracotta army buried with China’s first emperor Qinshihuang (259-210 BC) is always on the must-see attractions list for tourists around the globe.

It is estimated that the scenic spot has received over 450,000 visitors from October 1 to 6 during the National Day holiday, featuring a 4.2 percent increase from the same period last year.