Roughly thirty miles outside the former capital city of Xi’an rests the Terracotta Army of China’s First Emperor. Discovered in 1974 by a group of drought-stricken farmers attempting to dig a well, the thousands of statues created to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi have come to represent the strength and power of China’s ancient imperial past. However, these thousands of soldiers aligned in neat rows at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor also play a significant part in the post-Imperial period of China’s history. As the Warriors have entered the modern era, they confront historian and tourist alike with a sense of conflict and cliché as the past has been translated, and to some degree reconstructed, for the present.
First a little history lesson (this is after all a post by a history teacher who was able to nerd out across China with other history teachers!): The tomb of China’s first emperor needed to be suitable to his status. At the start of his reign, if Sima Qian’s record is to be believed, he conscripted roughly 700,000 laborers to begin construction on a new palace complex, and his tomb, its contents, and an army of soldiers. Shi Huangdi believed that it was his destiny to conquer the afterlife that was ruled by the mythic Yellow Emperor. To accomplish this feat, his tomb needed to be outfitted with the images of all that he needed. In the Chinese concept of the afterlife, the objects buried with the body did not need to be the real or functional object but rather a realistic symbol of the item. For example, a statue of a servant became a real servant in the grave. No blueprints or plans for the tomb complex survive, but the model is similar to those constructed in the Han period with a mound covering several rooms that spanned 56 square miles. The sheer size of his mausoleum was a microcosm of China modeled on an imperial city with a series of walls (both inner and outer), buildings, and a palace to house his tomb. The elaborate and fortified underground world was undoubtedly influenced by his personal fears and beliefs that those around him were trying to kill him. The tomb was a fallback to help ease death if he should fail to find the Elixir of Life.
Even in death, Shi Huangdi would continue to unify and rule a diverse people, and for that he needed a life-sized army. In order to be considered an army, it must have consisted of at least 10,000 soldiers, known as a wan. So far about 8,000 soldiers have been unearthed at the site. The production assembly required to produce the volume of clay statues must have been astonishing. There are four different types of warriors – cavalry, archers, lancers, and hand-to-hand fighters – and commanders of each type that are 4 inches taller. There were also life-size horses and chariots. The hollow bodies and hands of the statues were standardized and anatomically simplified in order to increase the speed of production. These different parts were then assembled in various combinations of stances, arm positions, and had different garments and bronze weapons. The face and hair style of each warrior, however, was unique as they were hand-sculpted. Prior to firing, the statues were vividly painted with red, white, black, green, brown, blue, and purple lacquer further adding to their individuality. The lacquer, made from the sap of trees, that was used has not survived and the statues uncovered that still have some pigmentation quickly deteriorate within a few moments of their discovery. The bland colors of the soldiers in rows today are impressive – imagine the sight of them brightly colored and prepared for the afterlife in 210 BC! Once completed, the Warriors were placed in a pit roughly 260 meters long, 62 wide, and almost 9 deep which was then covered with a roof. The result must have been a brilliant balance of individuality and uniformity – a symbol for the recently unified states.
The Warriors remained hidden until the spring of 1974. In March, the six Yang brothers were digging a well due to a lack of water for their crops as a result of the failed agricultural policies of the Great Leap Forward and the Four Pests Campaign. After digging for several hours, the brothers reached a thick layer of red earth which they assumed to be the remnants of an old kiln. They continued on and began to find bits of pottery, but kept digging. Water was more pressing than discovery. Out of the dirt emerged what they believed to be an earth-god. Very quickly the wider community and Communist Party leadership found out about the discovery. The Terracotta Warriors were reborn.
Just as Shi Huangdi sought a new imperial identity for China under the Qin Dynasty, Mao sought to forge a new national identity in the post-Imperial period. Museums and the ancient past provided a rich collection of stories to bend to his purposes of reimagining the present and the future. In the book Places of Memory in Modern China, David J. Davies argues that the Terracotta Warriors and the museum are "not places for conveying historically accurate memories; instead, they are locations for meaningful experiences that claim a relationship to the past and assert meaning in the present and for the future." The twentieth century was a period of upheaval in China politically, economically, and socially. The collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1922, the decades of civil wars, Japanese Invasions, and Mao’s Communist Revolution fractured the sense of historic stability the imperial system provided. Essentially, China faced an identity crisis as they entered the modern era. China had to find where they fit in the modern, interconnected world.
When the Warriors were discovered, they became a politically charged artifact as the state began to create a new historical narrative. After their discovery, construction began on the museum that would house and showcase the Warriors to the world. The museum itself, completed and inaugurated on October 1, 1979, was, according to a news article covering the opening, intended to be “the most modern Chinese museum of its time” to propagate the strength of China’s ancient culture. However, the archeological work at the site and on the statues have continued in the post-Mao period. Since the 1990s, visitors now are welcomed into the responsibility of protecting and preserving the "past imperial strength and grandeur" of China. One guide said that visiting the museum is “an experience with the culture and civilization of the past—the root of Chineseness— that makes claim on present generations to carry forward.”
Few of the over 5 million annual visitors to the museum think about how the Warriors are presented to them, or what they actually mean or represent. They are there for the “authentic” experience with the past the museum touts – “the Warriors on their original ground” – and the iconic view of the Warriors all aligned in neat rows. Just search “#terracottawarriors” or “terracotta army” on Instagram, which is blocked in China, and scroll through thousands of selfies and videos of visitors encountering the soldiers.
I myself fell victim to the sweeping view over Pit No. 1 this summer on my trip. This was the most crowded site we visited in all of China on our over 5,000-mile journey. I attempted to wait in line among the sea of visitors also waiting for the perfect picture and then was forced to push my way through to the front or I would still be waiting months later. After I escaped the forest of selfie sticks and “Instagram Boyfriends,” the history nerd reached the front. Yes, I’ll admit, I did take the Terracotta Selfie and proudly posted it on my Instagram courtesy of my trusty VPN. But as I moved beyond that initial swarm, the crowds thinned. It seemed that most tour guides, with their little flags held high in the air, spent less than 20 minutes with the Warriors and then left. Walking through the rest of the site, there were fewer people looking around and more heading toward the gift shop street along the exit route. I found myself thinking “what is the meaning of this place and why do so many people come?” I guess for many it is the “authentic” experience of the ancient world or for the bucket list.
I’m still trying to figure out what my visit means for me as a teacher and how I will convey that to my students this school year. Maybe my encouragement to them will be to stop using social media as a lens through which to view their lives, their world, and the past. So how does one move beyond “doing it for the ‘gram” when visiting the Warriors? Be an informed traveler. Without studying the past, the present has no meaning outside of perception. There is a parallel between the Warrior mania of the 21st century and the 20th century Egypt mania following the discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Howard Carter said it well when he opened the tomb in 1922, “what a short period three thousand three hundred years really was…that made that ancient and our modern civilization kin.” According to Dr. Lynn Meskell, a professor of anthropology and material studies at Stanford University, a person’s desire to connect with objects from the past “serves as a temporal linkage and a recollection of our shared humanity. It is through the sensory qualities of touch that we feel the compression of time and space…but the link is eternally severed. What we simply have left are their things, the physical reminders and instantiations of the greatness that was.” While these Warriors were never meant to be seen, they now are the second most popular tourist site in China behind the Great Wall. It would seem that Shi Huangdi did find immortality of a different kind through his Terracotta Army.
Study Tour
