Terracotta Warriors

It’s a schlep to get to X’ian China and the day we were there, the air was so bad that our eyes were burning (You can almost breath in the smog from the photo.) and we couldn’t wait to leave. Until we got to Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site.

The site was originally the ancient funerary project for Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

Today the Terracotta Warriors are displayed in a live museum built on the site, officially named Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, showing the life stories of the emperor and the once-powerful Qin Empire (221 – 207BC).

There’s a reason it’s one of the eight wonders of the world and is probably the most significant archeological excavation of the 20th century.

It’s breathtaking to see this massive collection of life-size terra cotta sculptures in battle formations, reproducing the mega imperial guard troops of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 - 210BC), the first emperor of the entire country.

So far about 8,000 warriors, 100 chariots, 400 horses, and more than 100,000 weapons have been unearthed from the three pits. And rumor has it there’s lots more to be unearthed. 

Every soldier has distinctive facial features carved by craftsmen individually.

When they were created, their uniforms were painted in bright colors, including scarlet, green, black, and purple. The moist underground preserved the paint but once the figures were excavated, the colors faded to the gray that you see today.

Ironically, they weren’t discovered by some clever archeologists. It seems they were accidentally found by a group of farmers in March 1974 as they were digging a well.