Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 76

This week's blog is all about the Terracotta Army. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about ... a short history lesson :-)

Similar to the Egyptian pharaohs, Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, began work on a mausoleum. This mausoleum would contain palaces, officials, artifacts, food .. everything that would be needed in the afterlife. In writings about this, it even said that there were rivers build with flowing mercury and the ceiling was decorated to look like the sky. He seemed quite prepared for the afterlife, ensuring that he had a complete army at hand, by building an army of terracotta warriors, complete with horses, that were buried along with him. The tomb was under a mount, called Mount Li.

In 1974, a group of farmers were digging a well about a mile east of Mount Li near the city of Xi'an uncovered a pottery figure of a soldier. A group of Chinese archaeologists investigated and found what is now known as the Terracotta Army. An entire man-made necropolis was found near the Emperors tomb mound, including offices, halls, stables, and other structures. There were 2 main entrances that were ramps where you can imagine the army and horses going down into earthen pits. These pits had wooden walls and roofs on them, although most were caved in by the time the archeologists found them. There are 4 main pits, although we only saw 3 of them.

The first stop of the day was to the Terracotta Army museum/workshop where they make (and sell) replicas. Out front, we took a moment and grabbed a couple pictures of us as warriors.

They then explained the process in which these are made, including firing them in the kiln. It is a multi-step process where the figure (in a mold) is put into the kiln and then the door closed up with mud (see the brownish area in the upper-middle, remembering that these are life-size warriors). Then they slowly heat from the very bottom where you see the fire, and then later, they put additional fire in the little trap door. The two fire locations are required so that the warrior does not crack.

They make warriors in all different sizes now for souvenirs. They do the main hollow mold and then they "clean up" the edges by hand.

One of the unique things about this 8,000-strong army is that there are no 2 warriors with the same face. Yep, you heard it right .. EVERY figure is different! The head, arms, legs, and bodies were created separately and then assembled. Here you can get your own life-size terracotta warrior with your own head (no, we didn't!) But you can see that they take multiple pictures and then have someone carve your head and then it gets put on a body.

Here is one of the warriors that is in this museum store (NOT the original) .. she told us how there are different hair styles, like this one with the knot of hair on one side. This is an archer, which you can tell because the side the hair knot is on, which keeps it out of the way when the archer goes back with his right hand to pull an arrow from the pack on his back. The 2nd picture shows the warrior with the knot on the other side. Behind him you can see the kneeling archer with the left-hand hair knot, holding a bow.

A few general pictures of the site and the buildings before heading inside.

Here is a depiction of the area, including the tomb mount (Mount Li).

Now ... we headed inside to see the army. It is MASSIVE, reminds me of a huge airplane hanger. You can see the rows where it looks like you have warriors and then walls between them. These are actually walls, and in a couple pictures later you can see the remnants of wood that were the walls .. they also had roofs on top. Pit one has 11 corridors, most of which are paved with small bricks with a wooden ceiling supported by large beams and posts. The wooden ceilings were covered with reed mats and layers of clay for waterproofing, and then mounded with more soil.

More of a close-up now, where you can see the different warriors. If you look closely, you can see that some of them have different hand and arm positions. For example, look at the 2 in the middle of the 2nd row, and compare their right hands (elbow bent, hand cupped, like they would be holding a pole) to the ones in the first row, where the arm is not bent and the hands are in different positions.

Here is another set, this front warrior would be a chariot driver, based on the position of his hands and arms. Envision him standing on a chariot with the reins of the horses in those hands.

Us in front.

This is a good view also of how they were lined up as well across the front. The way it was described, they were lined up exactly how an army would be lined up on a field of battle. The placement of the soldiers in the pits are all placed facing east. This is because when the Emperor was alive, he had unconquered land in the East so the warriors faced east to fend off a potential foreign invasion.

If you look right in the middle of this picture, this is the original entrance and you can see the wood beams.

Now, I mentioned earlier that the roofs had caved in when they were found. Here are a couple pictures to show what they actually look like when they were found. You can see broken pieces which were excavated and put back together.

Here I attempted to get a close-up to show the wooden beam that would have held up the roof.

These aren't that good, but I did try. These are the feet of the soldiers, which are all built on a square, flat plate, which allowed them to stand upright.

Here are some additional ones that were being restored prior to returned to the pits.

You can also look at this one in more detail and even compare him to some of the earlier pictures. You can see different arm positions and even a different uniform. Then I tried to get some close-ups to show the kind of detail that they had, including their uniform, face and hair.

Here is another chariot driver (based on hand positions) and some of the horses.

This is pit number three, which is the command post, with high-ranking officers and a war chariot. You can see how these are not in a military formation but instead, facing each other.

Here is the war chariot with the driver and horses.

They have replicas that they allow you (for a price of course) to stand in the middle of and take pictures, so of course, I couldn't pass up the opportunity!

We then go to go through an area that had individual examples of the different types of warriors out on display. This first one is the kneeling archer. Note the knotted hair on one side that allows him to get the arrows out from on his back. On the back you can see the colors that are remaining. The figures were also originally painted with bright colors, including pink, red, green, blue, black, brown, white and lilac. The painted surfaces on the figures began to flake and fade almost immediately after being unearthed.

This is a middle-ranking officer, and you can tell from the double-layered flat had and square-toed shoes. He also has a robe under the armor that extends down below the knees.

A high-ranking officer, this was one of several Generals found in the pits. It was fairly easy for archeologists to determine he was a high-ranking officer due to the clothing and headgear. He has double-layered robes under armor which has a fish-scale texture, and high headgear that is tied under the chin with ribbons. Another key point is the shoes, which have upward bending tips, which indicates rank. The other feet you can see have no upward bending tips.

A cavalry officer and his horse. Amazing deal on the saddle and bridle. There were 116 cavalrymen with their horses found in pit #2. You can see on the horse the saddle has a girth and crupper but no stirrups.

This is a standard archer (compared to the kneeling one we saw earlier) standing ready to shoot. There were close to 200 standing archers found.

Not the best picture, but I was trying to get the paint colors. As you can see, the faces here are painted, which is how they originally would have been. So just imagine, basically an entire field with a life-sized, fully-painted army of 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 chariot horses, and 150 cavalry horses.

There were also a few bronze items, which are hard to see here, but the museum was quite dark and they were behind glass so using the flash just wasn't really an option). There were two different types of carts, each with 4 horses.

Before we headed back to the airport, we stopped nearby for lunch. The menu was purely in Chinese (although it had pictures) but we asked our tour guide to help us by ordering us a few dishes that were "local cuisine" from the area, and that were good. In addition to our standby, Coke Zero, we had three things. The first picture shows a chicken and veggies dish and behind and to the left is a plate with what was potatoes that were prepared and cooked so that they were similar to noodles although not quite. Very interesting and quite good. The last picture is a dumpling soup, but different than I expected. You can see the little white squares, which I feared was tofu, but no, those are little bitty squares of the dumpling skin. So they are dumplings but "unconstructed" and put in soup. Mighty tasty!!