After defeating the six kingdoms that shadowed him in the Unification Wars, Qin Shi Huang rose up around the 3rd century BC. C., in the first emperor of China. He did it with a powerful army whose characteristics we know, in part, from his terracotta “benefactors”, thousands of figures of warriors in battle formation, horses and chariots destined to accompany him in the afterlife.
In 1974, a farmer located the first of these statues near Xi’an. Since then, excavations have uncovered around eight thousand, which, until then, had faithfully fulfilled their mission as guardians of an empire beyond the grave: the mausoleum of Qin, who pledged his life, and that of tens of thousands of workers, in the construction of that work.
When Qin died, in the course of a journey through eastern China to find the elixir of eternal life, his imperial project collapsed. The dynasty that he had forged could not survive the revolts of his people, fed up with his abuses, nor the insurgency of the military. His successors, the Han, seized power, which they would maintain for about four hundred years, between 206 B.C. C. and 220 d. C., a period of social prosperity and economic and cultural development that, among other milestones, strengthened the Silk Road.
This is the historical context presented by the exhibition “The legacy of the Qin and Han dynasties, China. Los Guerreros de Xi’an”, which the Provincial Council of Alicante and the CV MARQ Foundation have programmed at the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante (MARQ) until January 28, 2024. It is, without a doubt, the star dish on the menu of the commemorative acts for the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Spain and China, sealed in 1973 thanks to the good offices of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gregorio López Bravo.
It is not the first time that the warriors of Xi’an have gone out to see the world – although it is the first time after the Covid-19 pandemic – but, due to the number of pieces – more than one hundred and twenty, from nine museums and Chinese institutions– and the originality of the assembly, the appointment is destined to last. Its curator, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Professor of Science of Archeology at the University of Cambridge, points out, among other values, the unique character of the collection exhibited: “Never before has this selection of objects been presented as presented here ”. Some had not even been able to see each other outside of China.
Although the protagonists are them, those warriors modeled life-size with baked clay, there are many other pieces that help us assimilate the time and that tell us about the beliefs and customs of a spiritual and bellicose people who also knew how to have fun, savor wine of rice and applaud the variety shows.
Ceramics, cooking vessels, bells, plaques with imperial edicts, disc-shaped ingots, arrows, swords and armor, figurines of acrobats and animals and even a bronze replica of a funeral car, the original of which could have transported the first emperor to his tomb, make up an exhibition itinerary that also does not forget to record the names of eighteen slaves who served in the mausoleum works. Everything, with the latest technological resources to get into the skin of that mute and, nevertheless, expressive militia, which we can interrogate face to face, separated only by a few earthquake-proof glass cylinders.
But the thread goes beyond telling and singing the epic of the Qin and Han dynasties, since it goes back several centuries before – until the so-called Spring and Autumn period (770-475 BC) – and continues until several centuries later. In round numbers, a thousand years, although, strictly speaking, the legacy of the Qin kingdom has reached our days, and that is that this term, pronounced “chin”, can be traced in the etymology of China itself.
Since its discovery, the teams that have worked at the Xi’an site have pampered multidisciplinary research and the dissemination of this heritage, which, in 2010, earned them the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (in 1987, Unesco had already inscribed the mausoleum on its World Heritage list).
The same didactic vocation and the same scientific desire inspire the exhibition in Alicante, which, throughout three rooms, scented with different scents (cherry, incense, tea…) and set to the music of the composer Luis Ivars, presents a pleasant tour of the vicissitudes of the Asian giant in that perhaps not so remote past, if we consider that the first Chinese dynasty, Xia, appeared no less than in the 21st century BC. c.
On the one hand, noble life and the state bureaucracy are addressed; on the other, the funerary world, through a palace full of fantastic animals, musical instruments and gold and silver objects; and, finally, his warrior ardor, the latter embodied in the seven soldier figures that the Chinese government has donated, both from the Qin and the Han dynasties. These, from the Yanling mausoleum, are smaller than the first and lack their rich uniforms, since they were buried with clothes of the time.
Archers, horsemen or generals, each with their gestural expression, leave us speechless during our walk through the Xi’an excavation, which, together, is around 100 km2. Much remains to be scratched in those graves, and much to learn from this archaeological icon. The MARQ, in a much more manageable space, 1,100 m2, offers us, until next year, its most eloquent keys.
