On my second day in town, I took the bus out to see the Army of Terracotta Warriors with Marco (the Italian), and we met Amy and Laura (from Scotland) at the exhibit. It’s really a nice set up. We skipped the packaged tour, which costs Y285. We spent Y14 for the bus there and back, plus Y90 for admission. The bus ride was about 45 minutes each way, and I met another Italian family on the bus.

The Warriors are housed in a large complex with air conditioned museums and winding stone pathways leading through grass hills studded with young trees. Along the way, we were harangued by men and women hawking miniature terracotta figurines, which the men kept hidden in their shirts. Marco wanted one for his nephew, and the slightest attention to one seller drew the attention of a half-dozen others. Each time Marco asked to see a different set of statuettes, a hawker would pull a new box from his shirt and say, “Ten Yuan.”

The Warriors are amazing both for their detail—each one has a unique facial expression, and the entire army is positioned according to ancient war strategy doctrines—and for their sheer number. There are thousands.

What amazed Marco and me more than the Warriors themselves was the massive ego that must have driven their creation. What kind of ruler could order his subjects to construct thousands of life-sized and fully armed soldiers to protect him in the afterlife, knowing that the army would be buried with him and never be seen again?

The Qin emperor, the man behind this self-aggrandizing monstrosity, was 13 when he came to power, and he was the first monarch to unite all of China’s factions under one banner.

“This is what happens when a kid doesn’t get to play with army men enough,” Marco said.

“Maybe it’s what happens when he doesn’t do anything else,” I replied.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 10th, 2006 at 3:19 am and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.