The ego of a tyrant.
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009by Rach, who was truly fascinated
Xi’an, China
As if conquering six kingdoms before he turned 40 was not enough, the first ruler to unify China (way way back a couple of hundred years BC) also overcame dialect issues by standardising writing, and while he was at it, he standardised measurements and currency as well, and built over 6,400km of roads and canals. But today he is most remembered for his army, the one he had made so that he could continue his tyrannical rule over in the afterlife (this guy purportedly buried 460 scholars alive, so little did he appreciate their personal criticism of him – I suspect the line between reality and legend starts getting blurred somewhere round here). But it is true, there were warriors, thousands and thousands of terracotta army-men he had fashioned, no two of them alike, certainly not their facial expressions and not even the tread on their shoes the same. Hoping they would serve him forever, Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who came to the throne at 13 years of age, was unaware a marauding army would break in to his tombs and ransack his army, leaving them crumbled on the paved floor underground for over two thousand years before a farmer, drilling a well would drag a piece out. The rest, as they say, is history.
these all look identical because they are – they are replicas made at a nearby factory, which we visited on the way
The site was unlike anything we had expected to see. We knew we would walk around the tops of the pits and look down into them, but we did not realise they were encased in massive grey brick buildings, or that they covered such a huge area (though if we had stopped to think, we’d have realised that thousands of lifesize warriors would take up a lot of space), or that the people who had been farming the land where they were discovered would be relocated to fancy buildings erected nearby, a showpiece of the Mass Resettlements that have long been (and obviously still are) a part of Chinese social policy.
We began our visit with a 20 minute film in a 360 theatre. Although Rob would like to have seen it digitised and upgraded, I thought it added to the ambience to be a bit scratchy in places! Regardless, it was informative and set the scene for what we were about to witness. Wanting to save the largest pit for last, we entered the third one first. Big, cold and orange-hued, the smell of the dust was particularly striking. Well, it is an active archaeological site, I guess! The dimly-lit hall was filled with a large construction-zone-like dusty pit, and as we wandered around the elevated walkway, the children got most excited spotting horses and beheaded men, random limbs and scraps of pottery. How a complete figure could ever be put together from these pieces was a mystery to all of us. How almost seven thousand of them would be re-created is not much short of a miracle.
Pit two. More of the same. Children still engrossed when not being stopped for photo shoots with locals who seemed to forget what they were at the attraction to see!
Pit One. Brightly lit. Lacking the *mood* of the other two darker halls. And so big it was difficult to comprehend. 198 metres long. All filled with trenches of soldiers in various states of repair. Row after row of warriors. Absolutely mind-boggling. And an interesting study of how your after-life beliefs affect your here-and-now-living.
Terracotta Warriors Photo Album
1 attraction, 100 photos (not that we’ve uploaded them all, but the snazzy ones and silly our-family-as-warrior ones are there)
(or security guard, anyway!)
rayres