Terracotta Army – Silent Sentinels

As the story goes, in 1974 five farmers were working in the collective excavating for a new well.

In doing so, they unearthed the broken fragments of what was a silent army. Having no appreciation for their find, the farmers discarded the broken terracotta but kept the unearthed bricks that formed the base on which the famed Terracotta Warriors had once proudly stood to build pig pens.

The rest of course is history. The archaeologists moved in and the farmers became famous.

Over 2000 years ago several hundreds of thousands of workers spent 3 years constructing the Terracotta Army that was subsequently destroyed and plundered. The Army’s resting place is located near the Mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

A visitor to the Museum today will see many of the figures restored and exhibited in a hall built above the excavation site. Figures are grouped in battle order, rank by rank, some alongside horse-drawn chariots. Others are in infantry groups armed with spears, swords and crossbows.

Vault 1 houses 6000 life-size warriors, chariots and horses. Vault 2 contains formations of soldiers as the flank force and Vault 3 illustrates military headquarters.

The first sight of the contents of Vault 1 rendered us all speechless. The scale was much more expansive than we had expected. In fact there was a sense of occasion somehow as we looked down on those 2000 year old warriors so perfectly lined up, silent yet seemingly ready for battle.

At the Museum one of the farmers who had made the discovery posed for photos and autographed absolutely anything so long as it had been purchased in the Museum shop. However, local entrepreneurs looking for part of the action had managed to get beyond the security point into the Museum complex and were actively marketing their own crude version of the warriors. What the figures lacked in quality they more than made up for in price.

Intense negotiations went into high gear between the Museum shop and the bus door.

There were fourteen people on our bus which rattled with terracotta as it pulled away from the Museum. At breakfast next morning some people had had a change of heart, attempting to give their figures away because of the meagre weight allowance at North West China Airlines. There were no takers – everyone in the party was stocked with terracotta memorabilia for the trip home.

One wag suggested that all unwanted warriors could be tactfully disposed of in the excavation site for a new tower block across from our hotel. Who knows, in time this could end up being the next modern wonder and X’ian attraction.