Xian (known then as Chang-an) was the first capital of a
unified China. The gentleman who founded
the city was also the man who fought against, and consolidated in ten short
years, what were a group of squabbling kingdoms, creating the first unified
kingdom, the kernel of modern China. His
wasn't a dynasty that survived his death (210BC), but that first act of
consolidation is now considered seminal, and the country it gave birth to took
its name from that of his dynasty - Qin (pronounced Chin). He took the title Qin Shi Huang (The First
Sovereign Emperor of Qin) and is now referred to as the First Emperor: apart
from creating a united kingdom he built roads, consolidated the Great Wall,
created an administrative structure and gave China the script that lives on to
this day. He created a vast mausoleum
that he was eventually buried in and, in death, was guarded by a large army:
the Terracotta Warriors.
The burial site is some forty kilometres east of Xian and is
now easily accessed by an expressway.
After the collapse of the Qin dynasty, parts of the site
were ravaged and set afire and then forgotten.
In 1974, amidst a drought, six brothers started digging a well at what
they thought was a promising spot below the Lin Mountain.
As unexpected events go, this was a good one.
The spot they picked turned out to be the southeastern corner of the site where
the Warriors had been buried.
A few feet
further east or south and the warriors might have remained buried and the site
would have been just another undulation in the Chinese countryside.
There was more to the unexpected turn of
events.
The Cultural Revolution was
still raging, remember, and archaeologists were not exactly thick on the
ground.
Those that remained were likely
getting reeducated in revolutionary thought rather than practicing their
profession.
As luck would have it, there
was an archaeologist in a nearby
village called Lintong.
Perhaps he was
so far off the beaten track that the Cultural Revolution never caught up with
him.
In any event, he came to hear about
the broken shards of terracotta, recognized their significance, and moved to
protect the site.
The death of Mao in 1976 and the changes that followed meant
that excavating the site and reconstructing the warriors became a national
priority.
Today, visitors enter the site via a large granite paved
plaza. (Granite paving appears to be the
landscaping of choice for historical sites in Xian.) Manicured gardens, stands
of trees and landscaping mean that the original mound of dirt is a forgotten
memory. Lintong, five kilometres west,
is now a bustling town.
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| Entering Pit 1 of the Warriors' site |
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| Restored Pit 1. An amazing sight! |
The warriors, each one unique, now stand in
proud rows, having lost only their coats of paint and their weapons to the
centuries. The site has been only partly
excavated. The vast majority of the
warriors still lie buried, awaiting improvements in archaeological and restoration
techniques. What we see today is a live archaeological
site. The warriors themselves, large
ranks going back many rows, are impressive.
Even more impressive is the way the dig has been displayed. We see how the columns have been excavated, the
packed earthen walls that separate the columns, the indentations made by the
wooden beams that once provided a roof for the warriors, and much else.
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| The floors were rammed with earth and paved with bricks. |
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A sign shows us the spot of that 1974 well.
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Parts of three pits have been excavated, and walkways surrounded
the pits. Crowds (almost all Chinese:
there were only a handful of foreigners) walked around gaping, photographing,
chattering: people were friendly and orderly and there was no pushing and
shoving.
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| Pit 3 was completely different in layout, and was the command centre for the rest of the army. |
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| Yet to be excavated. Imprints of the fiber mats | | that were part of the roof |
A museum stood off to one side. The exhibits were well displayed and labeled:
originals, replicas, items loaned to, or borrowed from other museums.
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| A high ranking officer |
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| Cavalryman with his horse |
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There was a bookshop with the usual coffee table books,
postcards and assorted bric-a-brac. An
elderly man flanked by two minders sat in a chair signing books. He was the man who had dug that well back in
1974. He signed our book with a
flourish: Chinese calligraphy, like Arabic calligraphy is so much more
interesting, so much more aesthetic, than the mundane scripts adorning the
streets and books of Chennai.
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| Emerging out, we were greeted by this long kite in the sky |
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| We left the campus with mixed feelings of awe and regret: history usually remembers only tyrants. |
Huaqing hot springs
The way back to Xian took us through Lintong. Our driver, like all the drivers we met in
China, was uncommunicative. Perhaps,
like the rest, he spoke no English.
Perhaps Chinese drivers, unlike their Indian counterparts, prefer
silence. In any event, he pulled into a
parking lot in Lintong and silently pointed us down the road. For some reason: the weather, the topography
with undulations and the mountains to our left, the roads themselves, this
place reminded me of La Canada Flintridge in distant California. Perhaps I was just a bit tired.
The Huaqing Hot Springs site is an odd
agglomeration. The hot spring still
exists, bubbling into a fountain of sorts, and there were plenty of people
splashing the water onto their faces and arms.
There is a rather nice garden and lake.
We posed for pictures, and an excited Chinese gentleman came running up
and wanted his photograph taken with us.
So there we were, a Chinese, a Russian and an Indian, arms around each
other, smiling under a clear early Chinese summer sky.
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| The hot springs bubbling up |
An excavated site, now enclosed, includes the Tang dynasty
baths. The surrounding walls carried a
series of drawing depicting the great love affair of Emperor Xuanzong and his
consort Yang Guifei. As I saw it, the
lovers, having overcome assorted obstacles and objections, eventually became
swans (it could have been storks) and, together to the very end, flew off to
heaven. Sorry to say, it didn't bring a
tear to my eye. Perhaps I am too cynical
for these romantic tales.
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| | The crabapple pool |
The most interesting part of the site was a set of buildings
where Chiang Kai Shek had his headquarters in the 1930s. His office, bedroom and the room where an
assassination attempt took place (bullet marks on the wall!) are all well
preserved. Chiang is everywhere referred
to by his full title: Generalissimo.
Chiang and Mao were sworn enemies.
The communists defeated Chiang's Kuomintang in the late 1940s to take
power, and Chiang fled to Taiwan, taking with him a host of treasures from the
Forbidden City. Chiang was enemy number
one, in other words. Yet here was
Chiang, titled, and his history well preserved and far from airbrushed out of
existence. I suppose it was Chinese
pragmatism once more: there are plenty of tourists from Taiwan these days and
what better way to get their attention than an exhibit featuring the old
Generalissimo. I wonder what Mao would
have made of all this.
Airports, and the roads that take you into the city, are not
merely gateways. One's first impressions
of a country and a city are coloured by them, and first impressions leave their
taint on everything that follows.
Our final hours in China took us past the old city walls,
through suburbs, and onto the highway leading to the airport.
The suburbs were striking: a standing army of
identikit 20-30 floor apartment blocks, most complete and, as far as we could
see, unoccupied.
They looked well
planned, with broad access roads, provision for shopping areas and large
gardens.
American suburbia, scaled up
vertically, lacking nothing but residents.
We had seen something similar in the far outskirts of Beijing and this
was perhaps confirmation that at least some of China's recent growth was
actually a real estate bubble.
The highway to the airport was as impressive as the one in
Beijing and the airport itself had three modern terminals. The quick efficiency of Beijing was missing,
though. We had to wait a while for the
check-in counter to open. The impatient
queue that waited for the counter to open was more India than Singapore, and
the time it took for the immigration formalities suggested that while the
hardware was in place, the processes and people - the software - had some
catching up to do.
Our transit in Hong Kong was further confirmation that China
was still a work in progress. Not that
that was any consolation. Anna International Terminal in Chennai and the
potholed and dimly lit highway outside confirmed that we cannot take even small
pleasure in China's inadequacies.
