{"id":10309,"date":"2021-12-26T15:15:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-26T23:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/travel\/?p=10309"},"modified":"2022-02-15T09:06:13","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T17:06:13","slug":"terracotta-warriors-xian-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/travel\/terracotta-warriors-xian-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting to Exhale"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find myself in the center of a massive pit, surrounded by thousands of rigid warriors tall enough to look down on me. Posture perfect despite their years \u2013 twenty-two centuries \u2013 they stand in defiant battle formation. Overwhelmed, I back up to photograph a wiseacre standing behind a warrior who is missing his head. I accidentally bump against the warrior behind me. Down he goes. Then down go a hundred, like dominos. Thousands of warriors turn to face me, their expressions\u00a0uniform in anger. Calvary horses paw the earth and tug at chariots. Crossbows lock and load. I leap from the pit and only quit running when I\u2019m in Kazakhstan, refrains from Traffic\u2019s \u201cForty Thousand Headmen\u201d playing in my head.<\/p>\n

\"terracotta<\/p>\n

They may have feet of clay, but these mystery men still intimidate\u00a0my dreams. Fierce terracotta warriors have transformed\u00a0an impoverished Chinese countryside \u2013 some people still dwell\u00a0in caves \u2013 into a tourist Mecca. Beijing may have the Olympics\u00a0spotlight, but it is the ancient capital, Xi\u2019an, in central China,\u00a0one of the great ancient cities, where Chinese history really\u00a0built its foundations. Peasant farmers digging a well discovered\u00a0the first terracotta warriors in 1974. The more archaeologists\u00a0dug, the more stunned they were. Here the world awakened\u00a0anew to the former splendor and mystery of China<\/a>. Now encased\u00a0by a world class museum, the warriors are part of a\u00a0vanguard supporting the prediction that by 2020, China will be\u00a0the world\u2019s number one tourist destination.<\/p>\n

Hard to believe the museum, still a work in progress, began\u00a0in 1976, the last year of Mao\u2019s life. Some communist somewhere\u00a0was thinking tourism. Perhaps Mao \u2013 China\u2019s last\u00a0emperor, loosely defined, and ruthless \u2013 felt some kinship to\u00a0Qin. So how did eight thousand warriors with armor and\u00a0weapons, with cavalry and horses, congregate here, six\u00a0thousand in the largest pit, now shielded by a protective hanger\u00a0structure large enough to house an aircraft factory?<\/p>\n

One of the most ruthless of emperors, Qin, had his successes,\u00a0including launching the endless project of the Great Wall. Qin\u00a0created the first feudal and centralized empire in China, the Qin\u00a0Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), by subjugating the various states. But it was a bloody business and many tried to assassinate\u00a0Qin. He must have anticipated the need for an army to protect\u00a0him in the afterlife from angry spirits lining up from the scholars\u00a0he murdered, opposing armies he slaughtered, and his forced\u00a0labor pool, many of the latter buried alive to maintain tomb\u00a0secrets. Never mind the 3,000 barren wives and concubines \u2013 some revered, some tortured for pleasure \u2013 many entombed to\u00a0keep Qin company. One could assume that he had earned his\u00a0nightmares. And Qin began earning them young. Becoming\u00a0king while still twelve, he started building his own tomb in a\u00a0mausoleum complex spreading over two square kilometers,\u00a0constructed by 720,000 workers and craftsmen who eventually\u00a0labored nearly four decades at what was for most of them,\u00a0the ultimate thankless task.<\/p>\n

Embarking on such an endeavor instead of honoring\u00a0Confucian customs of respecting his late father with a grand\u00a0memorial brought him the disapproval of 460 Confucian scholars. And because Qin was not keen on critics, he executed them, burning many of them alive. About this time,\u00a0critics began to see the brilliance in the young emperor\u2019s plan. Qin\u2019s as yet unopened tomb is said to have pearls in the ceiling\u00a0for stars, and small rivers and lakes filled with mercury.<\/p>\n

\"terracotta<\/p>\n

One distant dig, labeled pit \u201cnumber five\u201d, surrounded by an\u00a0orchard, is filled with fragments of armor, like an upended\u00a0Scrabble game. It is the tip of a huge pit, mostly unexcavated,\u00a0and thought to contain only armor suits, perhaps tens of thousands\u00a0of them. As thousands of chariot warriors, infantrymen,\u00a0cavalrymen and horses were created \u2013 as well as dancers,\u00a0musicians and acrobats \u2013 Qin\u2019s theory was rather simple: the\u00a0armor honors those fallen in battle and not properly buried,\u00a0so the spirits of the dead and dismembered would be less\u00a0likely to track him down for vengeance.<\/p>\n

Today, the museum is visited by over two million people every\u00a0year, nearly a quarter of them foreigners. Commerce related to\u00a0the warriors already generates nearly a fifth of the province\u2019s\u00a0income, not counting what the surviving peasants who discovered\u00a0them, local heroes, make autographing museum books.\u00a0Warrior knockoffs of every size are available for sale everywhere,\u00a0including gas stations and roadside attractions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting contrast to the technical industries that have\u00a0gained a presence not very far away \u2013 China\u2019s first satellite\u00a0and first integrated chip were created in Xi\u2019an, and there are\u00a0scores of state run laboratories digesting and applying technologies\u00a0absorbed from around the world. The city itself has\u00a0contrasts of modernity and the old walled city within it, all of\u00a0which struggles against the dust and sand blowing in from\u00a0the advancing Gobi desert. Indeed, the Xi’an sky is as much\u00a0a signpost of global warming as the world\u2019s defeated glaciers\u00a0or blanched coral that more often catches the public eye. The\u00a0sky can be a brilliant blue, but in the morning it can be hard to\u00a0tell if the dim globe is the sun rising, or the moon. The warriors\u2019\u00a0stoic gaze that seems to underpin China\u2019s permanence\u00a0is mitigated by China firing up a new dirty coal-burning power\u00a0plant each week.<\/p>\n

The sky has the feel of an empire reaching its limits, as empires\u00a0inevitably do, just as the coal polluted air assaults the terracotta flesh.<\/p>\n

\"restoration<\/p>\n

\"armorAt the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeological Research,\u00a0fragments are assembled in restoration laboratories by German\u00a0and Chinese scientists who exchange preservation expertise.\u00a0Fragile artifacts, such as a bronze goose neck and head or\u00a0sword, are X-rayed and studied to determine weaknesses and\u00a0original designs. Some are tenderly and meticulously labored\u00a0over within a sealed glass chamber, the scientists\u2019 arms in long\u00a0rubber gloves, as if herding renegade microbes. The warriors\u2019\u00a0fragility is underscored by the nine or so different moulds that\u00a0attack the terracotta, said to originate from shifting humidity\u00a0and tourist breath. Despite the economic boom the warriors\u00a0generated, funding remains a tough quest. The entire process\u00a0of putting a single warrior back together can take up to a year.<\/p>\n

The Qin Dynasty didn\u2019t last long. Five years after Qin\u2019s burial in\u00a0210 BC, a vengeful general Xiang Yu raided the tomb, stealing\u00a0the real weapons the warriors held, and set a fire in the\u00a0necropolis that burned for months. Many of the warriors are as\u00a0shattered as egg shells. They now inspire craftsmanship of a\u00a0different sort. Today, selected tour operators provide special\u00a0access for travelers, who photograph themselves with the six\u00a0and a half foot figures as if they were old chums. Up close and\u00a0personal, visitors study faces that convey personality, faces\u00a0that, millenniums ago, would have studied theirs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the faces that most linger in this writer\u2019s mind, knowing that\u00a0each, though a notch larger than life, represents a person who\u00a0walked the earth, fighting in battles that seem otherworldly.\u00a0We have often seen the idealized faces of emperors across\u00a0different cultures. We seldom see the faces of Everyman. Their\u00a0faces speak volumes about the warrior vanities of the day \u2013 the\u00a0moustaches and goatees, the hair buns. Facial features reveal\u00a0that many hailed from minority populations to the northwest,\u00a0likely conscripted from conquered populations. The drama behind\u00a0their searching faces is enhanced by pondering the armies\u00a0of craftsmen who gave birth to the clay warriors, and the hardships\u00a0endured. Perhaps it is respect for these toiling workers,\u00a0not for the emperor, that the warriors most convey, as thousands\u00a0of them patiently await their chance to shock and awe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I find myself in the centre of a massive pit, surrounded by thousands of rigid warriors tall enough to look down on me. Posture perfect despite their years \u2013 twenty-two centuries \u2013 they stand in defiant battle formation. Overwhelmed, I back up to photograph a wiseacre standing behind a warrior who is missing his head. I accidentally bump against the warrior behind me. Down he goes. Then down go a hundred, like dominos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":10308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[917,2095,2118,2096,2094,2093],"class_list":["post-10309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-travel","tag-china","tag-emperor-qin","tag-home_page","tag-qin-dynasty","tag-terracotta-warriors","tag-xian"],"yoast_head":"\nWaiting to Exhale: The Terracotta Warriors of X'ian - Traveling Boy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Terracotta warriors have transformed the countryside of Xi'an into a tourist Mecca, awakening the world to the former splendor and mystery of China.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/travel\/terracotta-warriors-xian-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Waiting to Exhale: The Terracotta Warriors of X'ian - 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