Terra Cotta Warriors

The first tickets that I purchased for my trip were for the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit at the National Geographic Museum. Josh came down to DC after he got off work. After eating dinner we headed to the Museum and got in line. When they opened the door to our timed entrance we joined the thongs of people already in the exhibit. We made our way around and saw lots of artifacts and warriors and read a lot about the very paranoid Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, who came into power at the age of 13.

In 1974 there was a group of farmers digging a well and accidentaly stumbled upon a pit of buried, life-sized terra cotta figures portrayed as warriors, cavalry, horses, infantrymen, etc. It is approximated that there are 6,000+ figures buried and 1,000 have been unearthed and studied. This terra cotta army was meant to protect Emperor Qin Shihuangdi during the afterlife as he was entombed in the center of this group. It took hundreds of workers 36 years to create all the figures that span 19 miles and numerous pits.

I was amazed at the number of palaces and home the Emperor had built. According to the exhibit literature he built something like 400 palaces and 300 homes and was so paranoid that he was going to be killed that he more disguises and slept in a different place each night.

He also did things to contribute to the society such as creating a widespread road network, built the beginnings of the Great Wall of China, and standardizing the currency. To read more go to this site.

We made our way through the exhibit. No picture taking was allowed, but if you are interested you can look at these pictures. I recommend looking at a few of them at least. Pretty impressive stuff.

When we reached the end of the exhibit we were able to have a photo op with this replica statue.

Josh and warrior

Steph and warriror