In an uncharacteristic scheduling failure back in 2007-8, I didn't manage to snag tickets to the British Museum's sell-out show on China's first emperor and his terracotta warriors. The blockbuster drew in more than 850,000 visitors over seven months, becoming Britain's most popular cultural exhibition since the legendary Treasures of King Tut show in the '70s.
When Liverpool announced a similar terracotta warriors exhibition, I didn't waste time. Even if I would have to brave England's notorious bank holiday traffic and visit a city that, in more than 20 years in the UK, had never even piqued my curiosity.
Turns out I was wrong about Liverpool. (Of that, more in the next story.) But I was entirely justified to move fast for the terracotta warriors. They're on show until 28 October but weekends are already selling out well into the run, so move fast.
Standing face-to-face with these ancient, life-sized and remarkably charismatic figures is an astonishing experience, bridging centuries and cultures to find a shared humanity. There are nine here, from general to stable boy with all ranks in between, and one remarkable horse ready to snort and charge into battle. But, surprisingly, they aren't the best thing about this show. It's the wider context around them that elevates the experience, transforming this from a straightforward chance to take selfies with a few masterpieces to a subtle journey of discovery about a whole culture.
And that, no doubt, is exactly the intent. Because this isn't your standard, academically-driven show, created by curators over years and assembled from multiple points. It's travelling juggernaut of Chinese PR, assembled as a single package with a single message: we have been a phenomenally sophisticated civilisation for thousands of years. The single-mindedness extends to show design. There's a slight whiff of the amusement park about the experience as you queue up to enter a long cinema room, where a beautifully-produced film shows an array of gorgeous scenes on a wall of fractured, angled planes before the doors at the end fling open automatically to beckon you into the dramatic first room of the exhibition.
This familiar crowd pacing strategy, combined with the fact that the show has taken over an entire floor of Liverpool's World Museum, meant that the exhibition never felt crowded despite operating at sell-out capacity. Show designers clearly had crowds in mind. There's plenty of room between and around exhibits, large-print information panels are placed above head height and screening walls designed to resemble ceremonial gates hold down noise levels while separating show sections. There's atmospheric but unobtrusive background music, videos, animations and huge blow-ups of Chinese paintings and prints of the time to add colour to the earth-toned artefacts. Punters are welcomed ... even encouraged ... to take photos without flash. Don't know how to disable your flash? Just ask one of our staff members to help you with your device. It's a tourism triumph.
And a triumph of soft diplomacy. From the start, when a helpful chart lays the world you're about to explore against European history (roughly the height of classical Greek civilisation through the European Dark Ages), the sophistication of the art you're looking at argues that this is a world on par with ... and maybe ahead of ... Europe. Your first view is of one of those warriors: a horse keeper and one of his cavalry horses. The warriors go on tour a fair amount; there are thousands of them, after all. Horses are another matter. Experts estimate there are only 150 cavalry horses like this one, most un-excavated. And they're much trickier to move. So seeing this one was a real treat. But before you meet more of Emperor Qin's gang, you need to understand where he came from.
So we start 200 years earlier in the Warring States period, when seven families controlled small kingdoms and brawled amongst themselves to take over the wider country. (I suspect it's no accident the music in this section has a Game of Thrones feel to it.) Despite the upheaval of war, the period also gave China treasures of art, philosophy and religion that would underpin its culture for the millennia to come. Grave goods on display here are sumptuous and would be objects of desire today. Bronze bowls with intricate geometric patterns. Sinuous dragons. Round-bellied wine jars you'll want to cradle and take home. Clearly these states were prizes worth fighting for.
Enter Qin Shi Huang, who took over his own state at 13, conquered the rest of China by 38 and went to his eternal sleep with his facsimile court by 49. Like the ancient Egyptians, Qin surrounded himself with everything he thought he'd need in the next life. There were acrobats and strongmen for entertainment. Sadly, those terracotta figures didn't travel but we see the enormous, sumptuously detailed caldron they juggled to impress. A bronze goose looks lifelike enough to dispatch for dinner. Wine jugs stand ready for the banquet, jade ornaments prepared to adorn the great man's body. A one-third size model of two four-horse chariots ... one for guards to make way, the second an ancient mobile home bearing the emperor's body ... is one of the most spectacular sights here, even though they're modern copies of artefacts too fragile to travel.
But Qin leaves us in no doubt he's a warrior first. Here's his set of stone armour, implying that the afterlife has given him enormous strength. And, of course, the warriors. A stable boy crouches to one side, leaving seven front-line fighters lined up on a single platform. There's a variety here: general, light and heavy infantry men, archers. Uniforms vary to match their roles and, famously, every face is different. Though not completely unique. An interesting modern sculpture across from the warriors shows how a factory production line churned out body parts from moulds, then hand-assembled and
finished them to give that legendary variety. Though the warriors now share a patina with your garden pots, they were once painted to make them more realistic. Screens behind them alternate images of their colourful original state with scenes of their "homes" back in the trenches of the Emperor's tomb. The show designers continue their populist thoughtfulness here. Illumination is camera friendly, the open spaces around the warriors are broad and selfies (but no selfie sticks) are welcomed.
This is clearly the climax of the show, but there's a long and fascinating denouement. While following generations never met death on such a grand scale, the tradition of terracotta armies and courtiers continued. A Han dynasty general brought both mounted cavalrymen and foot soldiers on his journey to the afterlife. While the craftsmanship is a bit more crude, and they're only about a metre tall, there's an endearing warmth to their ranks and a thrill of excitement when you see that some have retained their paint. The Emperor Jing was clearly as worried about feasting as warring in his eternity, as his tomb pits revealed hundreds of domestic animal statues. There's a small farmyard here. (The gift shop offered replicas of the warriors. I would
have bought one of the pigs.)
Near the exit you come upon an intact tomb door, its lintel exquisitely decorated with hunting scenes. Past that, you enter a dimly lit room where a three-dimensional model of the inside of Emperor Qin's central tomb chamber stretches in front of you. My only criticism of the show: they didn't explain enough about it for me to appreciate the wonder of the re-creation then before me. Legend tells of 100 rivers of mercury flowing around his coffin through miniatures of the palaces and cities of his empire. Mercury was then thought to have immortality-giving properties; ironically ingesting the stuff may have killed Qin prematurely. Models of heavenly bodies are supposed to have rotated overhead, while gold illuminated the walls and booby-trapped crossbows were set to eliminate tomb robbers. Real Indiana Jones stuff. I didn't read all of this until I got home, so only then did I appreciate what a great job they did at creating the myth. The actual tomb chamber remains un-excavated. Signage in the exhibition suggests the reason is respect for both the dead and the heritage. A bit of post show research suggest the sky-high levels of mercury that test probes have revealed. The tomb designers have been successful at keeping invaders out, though not in the way they thought.
This is a show worth travelling for. It's also great value in light of recent London exhibition prices. Compare £14.50 for the warriors to a whopping £18.00 for the V&A's cruise liners show. You'll spend a lot more than £3.50 getting here, of course, but it's nice to feel that you're getting a bargain. And once you've visited the warriors, it turns out Liverpool makes for a great weekend of sightseeing. Which I'll cover in my next story.
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