The TerraCotta Warriors & Horses
1½ hours drive north-east from Xi’an in a village called Lintong is China’s greatest archeological excavation, the TerraCotta Warriors and Horses. Discovered accidentally by farmers in 1974 east of the Mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (246-209 B.C), terracotta figures of warriors and horses, most of which are life size, over 1.75 meters high, arranged in battle formations symbolically guard the mausoleum of the Emperor in the afterlife.
The craftsmanship of each clay warrior is as impressive as the scale of the project. Great care was taken to make each model unique, and each of the 8,000 soldiers had their own facial features, hair-style, and when dressed in the same uniform, the folds and fit are also unique. Originally vivid colors were meticulously painted onto these life-sized clay warriors over 2,000 years ago by skilled artisans. Regrettably, when exposed to air and sunlight during the excavation, these colors began to rapidly deteriorate and disappeared within minutes.
The warriors were strategically placed to serve as guardians of the tomb belonging to the first emperor of unified China. As of today, the tomb remains unopened. According to local historians, the tomb is believed to encompass an entire subterranean kingdom and palace, complete with ceilings adorned with pearls to simulate the night sky. The tomb is also said to house exceedingly rare artifacts and booby traps set with crossbows to deter any potential intruders. To safeguard the tomb’s secrecy, the laborers who constructed it were supposedly buried with the emperor.
Within the tomb, mercury was used to fashion rivers: the Yellow river and the Yangtze river, and the seas in such a way that they flowed. Modern tests have indicated extraordinarily high levels of mercury in the surrounding soil. Interestingly, historical records suggest that the emperor’s demise was attributed to the ingestion of mercury pills, which were believed at the time to possess qualities of an elixir of immortality.
So far, altogether over 8,000 pottery warriors, servants, officials, infantry, shooting soldiers, vehicle soldiers, cavalryman guardians, horses, chariots, and even weapons have been unearthed and displayed in the museum. It is cited as the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’.
Admission is ~100 RMB, 8am to 6pm.
1.5 hours north-east of Xi’an
Located nearby the Terracotta Warrior Museum, Qin Shihuang’s mausoleum is larger than Egypt’s Great Pyramid, and has still not been fully excavated.
My office at the Terra-Cotta Warriors & Horses
In 2013 / 2014, the Terra-Cotta Warriors & Horses site also served as my office location in Lintong, while I was the General Manager and Executive Director of the Shaanxi QinHuang Grand Theatre onsite building the theatre and preparing it’s inaugural show “China’s First Emperor“.
All visitors to the Terra-Cotta Warriors & Horses pits had to walk past my clear glass office front. It made for an interesting spectacle (and barrages of daily selfie photos) seeing a fat white foreigner, buddha like in physical stature, seemingly in charge behind a giant desk with a gang of Chinese support staff at my whim.