The Terracotta Warriors

14/02/02

Forty-five minutes on the number 306 bus took us to the Terracotta Army.

After running the gauntlet of tourist shops on the approach to the site, we were met by a series of buildings that resembled a business park (which is kind of appropriate). But for the numerous signs advertising the Warriors, we could have been looking at call-centres, car dealerships or offices, neat landscaped trees and patches of grass completing the effect. For some reason, I felt a surge of disappointment. Still, it wasn't the outside of the buildings we were there to see.

On entering Pit 1, a huge aircraft-hangar of a building, I was suddenly struck by a flashback to my childhood. I was about ten years old, queuing in the rain with my parents on Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh. A long line of people were waiting patiently, excitedly, to see these ancient pottery warriors, recently discovered, and come all the way from China. I remembered standing opposite these strange old soldiers, not much taller than myself, and aping their expressions and poses, each one of them different, inscrutable and eerie...

Pit 1 houses the main collection of troops, the size and number impressive. You're not allowed to take photographs, so Danuka spent most of the time glancing about furtively, before firing off secretive snaps. I felt sorry for the broken warriors, jagged and cracked, left to lie in discarded piles at the edges of the pits like bits of sliced-up dead around a battlefield. Despite the casualties, however, there's a standing army of thousands.

By far and away the best pieces are the ones in glass display cases, which you can scrutinise close-up. You can really appreciate the detail that's gone into each unique figure, and it makes you wonder if they were actually modelled on real soldiers, now long dead, but cast into a strange immortality they could never have imagined. A portly, jolly looking general grins out at you, an archer takes aim with an intent expression of concentration, a cavalryman proudly holds a beautiful horse by its reigns.

Of course, these warriors were never meant to be unearthed, but were to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang from looters, invaders, mortal and immortal enemies. It's estimated that, in the three pits, there were originally 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. I wonder if he's now turning in his grave

Tam, Danuka and Rebecca decided to visit his tomb, but I had more contemporary concerns. I had a date.