Terra Cotta Soldiers

The day we went here it was INCREDIBLY hot (actually, the guide book says that Xian is "bloody hot"). It was about an hours drive from our hotel. The soldiers were found by four peasants who were digging a hole for a well in 1974. They had the foresight to stop digging and contact some kind of authority to say "Hey, we found something!"

When you enter the parking lot there is an enormous statue of Qin Shihuang (1st emperor of Qin). We walked about maybe an eighth, maybe a quarter of a mile to the actual museum and the sites of the digs. They are still in the process of digging out all of the soldiers, but they think there may be as many as 7,800 in all. Qin Shihuang (not easy to type!) was apparently obsessed with his death (the idea of it), and had people start constructing the tomb well before his death. One reason for this obsession may be that he was an unusually cruel leader (well, ok, let's think about that, maybe he was just a wee bit worse than usual for the time, which was about 210 BCE), as was his son. The Qin dynasty was one of the shortest dynasties.

Once you enter the main park there are three main buildings. The one straight ahead contains the bulk of the soldiers. They are mostly facing eastward, because Qin Shihuang thought his enemies would come from that direction (perhaps he meant us?). As with everything in China, this main building was crowded at first. The first pit/vault is so large that even though there are large numbers of peole, it's actually possible to spread out and get a little personal space (a difficult thing in China. The concept of personal space here is verrrry than in the US). We entered the pit and most of the soldiers were facing us, although some are facing sideways. (I don't know why, so please don't ask) The picture everyone wants is the one where you face the whole pit. It took a ton of pictures, and I think some of them came out ok. I tried to get individual faces, because apparently each soldier is modeled on the faces of the builders. It was difficult because so many people kept bumping into me. In fact, at one point I was kneeling down to take a picture of one of the group of soldiers, and a tour guide backed over me. He was concentrating on whatever he was talking about with his group.

What is amazing and astonishing is not only the sheer number of soldiers, bt the fact that so many of them are still in such good shape. Ok, sure, so many of them are missing heads, and some of them are missing their hands, and they are all missing their weapons, but don't forget, these guys are over 2,000 years old.

The whole experience is kind of surreal, actually. Here's this emperor who manages to unit feudal China, who orders the building of his mausoleum to begin as soon as he becomes emperor. Besides the Egyptians, who does that? You'd have to be pretty damn morbid to have that be your focus. Of course, as I'm writing this, I'm reading about this in the book I bought at the shop ("Awakened: Qin's Terra Cotta Army", Shaanxi Travel and Tourism Press), and I see that later dynasties did this practice too (Han, Tang). I guess when you live in dangerous times and your empire could be overthrown by peasant revolt at any minute, this is probably a prudent course of action.

Qin Shihuang's tomb is actually 1 and a half kilometers to the west. Legen has it that Qin built his mausoleum with a river of mercury in it and arrows that would shoot out of the walls to protect against theives. Since the Chinese government isn't certain about whether or not this is true, they are moving very slowly on the excavation of the tomb. A river of mercury after 2000 years has got to be detectable in the environment, doesn't it?

Some stats about the tombs: (sorry for the metric)

Vault/pit 1: 210 meters long, 60 meters wide. About 6000 soldiers in vault one. Not all have been unearthed (it's an active archaeological site, although we didn't see anyone working when we were there).

Vault/pit 2: 1000 figures

Vault/pit 3: 68 figures, one war chariot

I did mention I had a ton of pics, I'll bore you with them when I return.