Unleashed Voices: Terra Cotta Soldiers—My mysterious bamboo junk and the emperor's army
Baring the sarcophagus of china’s first emperor, murdered in 210 BCE … we were the first eyewitnesses to the most extraordinary archaeological find of ancient China: The Terra Cotta Army.
If there were ever a question of how capable China is of taking a long view of history and its role in shaping the nature of human events, one has only to look deeply into the society of the Qin dynasty of China. Today, Unleashed Voices presents the extraordinary discovery of the Terra Cotta Army of China's first emperor 2,200 years ago—uncovered, then first chronicled by Audrey Ronning Topping in the ancient Chinese capital of Xian.
By Audrey Ronning Topping
‘I can’t believe we are really here!” I exclaimed to my father, Chester Ronning, a retired Canadian ambassador born in China 81 years ago when his parents served as missionaries with the China Inland Mission. It was October 20, 1975. We had just arrived at China’s ancient capital of Xian With us were my daughter Lesley, a film editor, my sister Meme and her son, cinematographer Richard Westlein. It was Lesley’s 20th birthday. Her grandfather’s present was to let her become an eyewitness to the virtual reincarnation of the First Emperor of China.
Back in New York, my father, who speaks Mandarin, had read in a Chinese newspaper about some peasants digging a well. They had stumbled upon a lifelike head of a pottery soldier and alerted China’s Department of Relics. Archeologists soon discovered an underground, battle-ready army, comprised of some 7,500 life-size broken, terra cotta warriors and horses entombed in combat formation to safeguard the First Emperor’s mausoleum for eternity.
The phantom army had remained concealed for some 2,200 years until discovered in 1974 A.D. What a story! I was anxious to report it. The United States had not yet recognized the People’s Republic of China, so visas to China were almost impossible to obtain. I urged Dad to request permission from his “old friend,” Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, to grant us visas so we could visit the historic site. We were thrilled to receive a personal invitation from Premier Zhou himself as the first westerners ever to see this miraculous find.
I promptly received assignments from both the National Geographic magazine and The New York Times to report and photograph the discovery, (black & white for The Times and color for National Geographic). When our group reached Xian, it was pouring rain and the Chinese in charge of the dig refused to let us proceed to the site. After Dad could no longer “talk reason” with them, quietly suggested we “cause a scene.” So, Lesley and I looked sorrowful. Meme sniffled, and Richard stood up to his full six-foot six and scowled down at them while Dad apologized profusely for his unworthy children’s outrageous behavior.
After a five-course luncheon to delay us further, the Chinese capitulated and arranged escorts. We were shepherded by the Mayor of Xian, two archaeologists and an entourage of irate Chinese officials who were soon charmed by Dad’s local accent as he told them stories of old China. We drove 40 miles east alongside a dirt cart path on a portion of the Old Silk Road on the south bank of the Wei River, where the first emperor, in 221 BC had erected a magnificent city named Hsien-yang. To populate his new metropolis, he transported 120,000 wealthy families from all parts of the empire thus enfeebling the feudal aristocracies of the Warring States he had recently conquered.
The emperor erected exact replicas of 270 vanquished palaces and gardens joined by covered passageways and occupied with servants, concubines, and food. Fearing for his life, he inhabited a different palace every night. Anyone revealing his whereabouts was put to death along with his family. As we drove along the same throughfare 22 centuries later, curious peasants waved at the foreign devils traveling in a caravan of black limousines along the same stretch of the Silk Road where Emperor Qin and their own ancestors had witnessed camel caravans loaded with silks and luxury goods en route to the Roman Empire. We parked on the edge of a millet field a mile west of the emperor’s forbidden grave mound.
Standing in the rain, we became witnesses to among the most spectacular excavations of the 20th century. The rich, red soggy soil of the Yellow River valley had been freshly slashed open and rolled back, evocative of a Chinese scroll, revealing the dramatic tableau of an ancient battlefield. There, semi buried in their sodden crypts were hundreds of battered, but beautiful life-size terra-cotta statues of armed warriors, servants and majestic horses pulling manned war chariots—the retinue of unified China’s first emperor.
The emperor erected exact replicas of 270 vanquished palaces and gardens joined by covered passageways and occupied with servants, concubines, and food. Fear for his life, he inhabited a different palace every night. Anyone revealing his whereabouts was put to death along with his family. When we drove along the same throughfare 22 centuries later, curious peasants waved at the foreign devils travelling in a caravan of black limousines along the same stretch of the Silk Road where Emperor Qin and their own ancestors had witnessed camel caravans loaded with silks and luxury goods en route to the Roman Empire. We parked on the edge of a millet field a mile west of the emperor’s forbidden grave mound.
Viewing these primeval combatants reaching out pathetically from their graves, we were moved almost to tears as one often is in the presence of great art. The sight of the fallen warriors, mounts, charioteers, and kneeling archers still arrayed in battle formation was breathtaking. Here and there, a life-like hand and a booted foot jutted out of the archaic soil. Proud heads, torn from broken bodies, looked up from their ancient crypts with haunting eyes brought glisteningly alive by the rain. Some of the figures stood upright, intact, and poised as if waiting for a command to attack. Others lay smashed and scattered. Only a few traces of their original painted exteriors remained.
This early excavation site was later designated as Pit 1. A larger necropolis of 600 pits was later uncovered in 2008. We were told of a “desecration” of the underground army three years after the emperor’s death when the Han Dynasty usurped “The Mandate of Heaven” from the Qin Dynasty. Weapons were confiscated and wooden chariots burned.
My stories of the finding of the spectral army soon became world headlines—and archaeological discovery comparable only to King Tutankhamun’s tomb in ancient Egypt. The life-size pottery soldiers represented real men in the emperor’s actual army. They were stand-ins for the living sacrifices once offered the dead. Each visage appeared to be modeled on an individual face, some proud, others ferocious, a few even close to a smile. Sculptors had first formed a base from coarse clay, then with finer paste filled in such details as mustaches and braids. The figures are the earliest life-size clay sculpture in China. Their realism startles art historians, who had believed that such naturalism appeared much later in the empire's history.
When we first visited the site in 1975 only 591 soldiers, 2 life-size, alert terra-cotta horses with curled forelocks and knotted tails, and four chariots’ horses four abreast, hitched with leather harnesses and brass fittings, drawing wooden chariots were undergoing excavation. Some of the horses were incredibly intact, while others, with broken backs, sagged sadly against one another, though their magnificence remained undiminished. Nearly 500 life size terra-cotta horses were later excavated, including 100 cavalry horses and 350 chariot horses. The striking features, and the spirited expressions of the horses have led scholars to reappraise the beginnings of realism in Chinese art, hitherto attributed to the Han dynasty (206 BC-208 AD). I wondered if the sculptors of Emperor Qin’s army had created this style, or would some equally vivid works be found in an even earlier tomb? A thousand years later their clean, curved jawline became the mark of the famous Tang dynasty horses (618-907 AD). One of these stands proudly in my living room.
East of the dig, atop Mount Li, the emperor’s cosmic designed tumulus stood unimposingly in the middle of a cornfield. The mysterious three-layered, 15-story tumulus constructed in conformity with symbolic patterns representing the harmonious universe, was almost covered with pine trees and pink wildflowers. The exterior gave no hint of the mysterious interior. The walls, temples and soul towers originally standing in the 500 acres of the walled-in “spirit city” had disappeared. The sacred objects had long since been carried away by vandals and invading armies. It was with some trepidation that we trekked half-way up the tumulus before a fierce wind, or perhaps it was the emperor’s poltergeist, drove us back down.
Who knows what lurks in the tomb of China’s First Emperor? The dragon knows. The dragon-shaped junk bearing the emperor’s enigmatic sarcophagus may still float on quicksilver. We could sense the ghost of the First Emperor haunting his spooky mausoleum—as ancient as Egypt and Rome.
During the 14 years of his reign, Emperor Qin was a cruel despot who ruled by the authoritarian “Legalist’’ philosophy. He cruelly crushed all opposition, burned the classic books, and buried 460 Confucian scholars alive. Paradoxically, he is also remembered for accomplishing the sweeping changes that made his dynasty a turning point in history. The name China comes from Qin. The first emperor standardized the gauges of chariot and wagon wheels enabling his armies to travel in the same ruts over the 4,000 miles of new roads connecting his empire. He also standardized laws, script, coinage, weights, measures, and languages. Qin is credited with connecting the walls and ramparts that had been erected earlier by kings of contending feudal states into one “Great Wall.” What is forgotten is the fact that hundreds of thousand workers and prisoners of war perished during construction. Their bones were crushed and mixed with mortar—earning the Wall the grim nickname “the world's longest cemetery.”
Yet for all his power, the emperor lived in fear of his life, moving secretly among the opulent palaces cloned from subjugated feudal royalty. To prolong his life, the monarch sought guidance from mystics. Charlatans and practitioners of the occult and black magic enriched themselves by exploiting his credulity. Taoist priests declared they had discovered the elixir of immortality on the Islands of Immortals in the Eastern seas. They promised the emperor he would live forever in exchange for three of his ships loaded with China’s finest young men, maidens, and craftsmen. The ships sailed with the precious cargo—but never returned. Perhaps the Taoists did find the fountain of youth. A legend claims they colonized Japan. And indeed, today, a surviving monument in Japan, which I have seen myself, bears a Chinese inscription about Hsu Fu, a Taoist priest who was on the voyage and died in Japan in 179 B.C. He is believed to have established a region in Japan known as the “Kingdom of Qin.”
Although Emperor Qin had prophesized his dynasty would reign for 2,000 years it lasted barely 14 years, from 221-208 BC, the shortest reign in Imperial China. Despite his world power and desire for eternal life, the emperor met his brutal demise at age forty-nine.
Some 22 centuries after China’s First Emperor joined his ancestors, our family group became the first foreigners to witness his virtual reincarnation. We felt he lived again through the discovery of his famous pottery army. When I visited the museum, 23 years later, President Clinton was among the millions of tourists viewing the army which was exhibited in a three-acre, flat-roofed vault. The soldiers and chariots were lined up in “Sword Formation” with the frontline archers representing the tip of the sword, the chariots and columns of foot soldiers forming the blade, and the rear guard the handle. The supervisor of the museum welcomed me with enthusiasm. He had framed my National Geographic cover story of the archeological discovery and hung the pages on his office wall.
For me the emperor’s army had morphed into an overcrowded tourist attraction and lost its fighting spirit. However, China’s First Emperor lives again through his life-size pottery soldiers on exhibition in museums around the world.
As I gaze at my humble rattan reproduction of the bamboo junk bearing the emperor’s sarcophagus, I am reminded of the mystery and horror of it all and wonder what other stories exist about the evils and acompishments of China’s worthy and unworthy imperial ancestors.
Before we left China we were invited by Premier Zhou Enlai to a memorable formal dinner in honor of my father in The Great Hall of People.
Premier Zhou promised me that when the doors of the First Emperor’s tomb were opened again, I would be the first journalist permitted to write about it. that is the secret of my old age, I am still waiting for those doors to open so I can finish the rest of the story.
One of the most mysterious artifacts in my bizarre collection of “Dungxi” (stuff) is a miniature Chinese junk, skillfully woven from bamboo into the shape of a dragon—symbol of the emperor and icon of good fortune. The true story of the original bamboo junk is still secreted in Mount Li, the ancient burial mound of China’s First Empertor, Qin Shi Huang which has not been excavated since his entombment in 210 BCE. According to historical records the treasures buried with the emperor were too numerous to count.
I chanced upon this rattan junk while wandering around a Chinese commune back in 1978. There it was, sitting on the top shelf of a dusty kiosk waiting for me. Chills ran up and down my spine when I recognized it as a miniature copy of the original 22-centuries-old bamboo junk ostensibly containing the dazzling sarcophagus bearing the royal remains of China’s First Emperor, still floating on its sea of poisonous quicksilver.
The National Geographic Magazine had just published my cover story: “China's Incredible Find” in April 1978 about the discovery of a life-size pottery army guarding the tomb of China’s First Emperor with a painting of his funerary junk.
When I recognized the “Emperor’s Junk” the mustachioed vendor grinned knowingly and lowered the humble price. So, I walked away with my bamboo junk which now stands on a brass table in my living room reminding me of my best journalistic scoop and inspiring me to wonder what treasures still hide inside the emperor’s enormous tomb.
The first emperor joined his ancestors 22 centuries ago, on September 10, 210 BC. His cadaver was encased in a green suit made of jade squares sewn together with gold threads and shrouded with pearls. After the ritual pomp and ceremony of the royal funeral, his jaded corpse was placed in a dazzling molten copper sarcophagus and transferred by loyal pallbearers into a subterranean palace representing the cosmos. The cosmic designed, three-story, man-made mountain was created in the center of a “spirit city” enclosing 500 walled-in acres. The ghostly sanctuary inside his tumulus stretched the length of five football fields. Earth was depicted by a detailed topographical map portraying a microcosm of China in 221 BCE with meticulous terra cotta models of the emperor’s 270 palaces. The heavens above were studded with precious jewels. Luminous pearls, shining day and night, represented the sun and the moon.
His sarcophagus was interred in a massive bamboo junk, floating on a river of quicksilver. In the “Basic Annals of Qin” it was written:
“When the work was done, after the great event and everything was hidden, the inner door (solid jade) was shut and then the outer doors (marble) were lowered into place. All the craftsmen and laborers were shut inside. None allowed out again.”
To prevent pillaging, devices were installed to shoot deadly arrows at any who dared disturb the peace of the dead. The stone portals to the interior of the emperor’s tomb have remained closed to this very day. Since then, no mortal has laid eyes on the interior of his tumulus. The mysterious tomb has never been excavated. It is believed to hold the greatest riches of all time. The undiscovered treasures maybe have been hiding in plain sight for 2,200 years.
The corpse of China’s First Emperor is alleged to still reside in the coffin in the junk where it was interred with legendary splendor intended to express for all time the emperor’s divine power over his dominions.
However, the emperor’s divinity was shattered abruptly by his murderous youngest son, Hu-hai. The scurrilous deed was committed one scorching summer day when the Celestial Monarch, accompanied by his mile-long caravan of horse-drawn chariots, was directing a royal inspection tour. Hu-hai, in cahoots with his conniving chief eunuch, Chao Kao, and a traitorous Prime Minister, Li Ssu, poisoned his father by slipping quicksilver and powdered jade into his bird’s nest soup. To keep the assassination a secret, they hitched a wagon full of rotten fish behind the emperor’s golden chariot to disguise the stench of his decaying cadaver.
How do I know this?
The only record of the interior of the First Emperor’s tomb was calligraphed, like most of China’s early history, by the famous Han Dynasty historian, Ssu-ma Chien, 100 years after the fact:
“As soon as the First Emperor became King of Ch’in, building was started at his tumulus, Mount Li, while after he won the empire, more than 700,000 conscripts worked there. They dug through three subterranean streams and poured molten copper for the outer coffin; the tomb was filled with models of palaces, pavilions, and offices, as well as fine vessels, precious stones, and rarities. Artisans were ordered to fix up crossbows to shoot thieves. All the country's streams, the Yellow River, and the Yangtze were reproduced in quicksilver and by some mechanical means made to flow into a miniature ocean of mercury where the emperor’s dragon shaped sarcophagus floated. The heavenly constellations above were depicted in precious stones and the regions of the earth below. Candles were made of whale oil to ensure their burning for the longest possible time.”
The emperor had lived a short but significant life. In 246 BC, when the Roman Empire was expanding in the West, he was a prince of the Warring State of Qin. At age 13, when his father, the King, died, he inherited the throne. His first command was to order 700,000 prisoners of war to build him a tomb of unprecedented grandeur. Forced laborers worked on his mausoleum day and night for 36 years.
According to historian Ssu Ma Ch’ien, the King of Qin spent the next 25 years in battle and conquered all of China “like a silkworm devouring a mulberry leaf.” After overpowering six of the Warring States, the legends of his supernatural powers became so strong that the other feudal kingdoms surrendered. By 221 BC, the King had united China and created the heart of the Chinese nation known as the “Middle Kingdom.” He then modestly anointed himself Qin Shihuang di (China’s First Divine Emperor). No one dared object.
This is the same China that Xi Jinping rules today. The nation's 5,000 year-old recorded history is the root of Chinese power, self-confidence and culture. How could it not be confident? History is on its side. It is the only civilization that has survived intact through the ages, outlasting the supremacy of empires from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt through the Mongols, Persians, Ottomans, not to mention the Hapsburgs and the Vikings.
An amazing tale, let alone the actual site.