Tomb of Emperor Jingdi

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It's time for you to join Karen and me back on the road in Xi'an.  You'll recall that the Terracotta Warriors were found in 1974 by a peasant drilling a well.  The Tomb of Emperor Jingdi was discovered just as serendipitously a few years ago when a new expressway was being built to link Xi'an with its airport to the northwest of the city.  The museum and the excavation area we visited were only opened last year, and Lonely Planet calls the site "easily Xi'an's most underrated highlight." At the risk of trivializing this site, I would like you to think of what I am about to describe as a large, underground, terracotta dollhouse. Let's talk about the differences between the Terracotta Warriors and the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi, because there are important contrasts.  The Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor are life-size, while the figures at the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi (188-141 BC) are one-fourth life size.  The Terracotta Warriors are just that and only that--warriors--in full battle array.  The figures at the Tomb of Emperor Jingdi--some 50,000 of them found so far--are a cross-section of Chinese life including servants, domesticated animals, and even female cavalry on horseback.  The figurines originally had movable wooden arms (now gone) and were dressed in colorful silk robes.  The figures are anatomically correct.

First we'll go through the museum, and then we'll visit the excavation site.  This picture will give you an idea of the scale of the figurines.

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