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Centuries before King Qin became the first emperor of China, in 221 BC, the belief in the destruction of life had already spread throughout the territory. This meant that he was very rich, all that was needed for the tomb to protect his safety. From cooking utensils. Also animals, slaves and concubines, which were sacrificed to be buried next to their master.
When the Qin came to power, the idea did not decline, but a subtle change was introduced, which was to replace the elements of the objects with ceramic images. “Then we begin to understand what the Terracotta Warriors are and why they were created.”
Marcos Martinón-Torres, a professor at the University of Cambridge, explains that in MARQ, when the president of the Provincial Council, Carlos Mazón, shows the Legacies of the Qin and Han dynasties. Xian soldiers who will open their gates. today in MARQ.
A “unique” specimen, with more than 120 pieces from the Chinese museum 9 “which is presented for the first time in the world” and which “has never been seen like this.”
And not only because the seven original warriors and one horse are shown, or because they have been seen in Spain for the first time in almost a decade, or because it is the first time that these soldiers have left Xian since 2018.’ We wanted to make a complement about science and in addition to talking about archeology and history, because there is a lot of science in this exhibition.
The fallen Xian warriors, of whom 1,500 of the 8,000 are estimated to have been dug in the pit, which involved removing earth equal to 5,000 truckloads, are nothing more than an “accessory” element found at the entrance to the Qin Emperor’s mausoleum; located in an area of 100 square kilometers. “It is an authentic city that was built to survive the destruction, perhaps a little more than ten years, with palaces, canals, acrobats, a pyramid with the emperor’s tomb 60 meters high, which has not been excavated. the entrance is cotta to defend.
These soldiers are the center of the MARQ exhibition, but for 1000 years of Chinese history, from a few centuries before the emperor to several centuries after, to better understand the context, when, how and why of the warriors,” says the ambassador.
A price of three rooms
Three temporary rooms in the museum of Alicante travel through time through historical fragments, but also through different music and scents. Room 1 smells like cherry and rice; room 2, with fire and chamber 3, with lotus flowers and tea. And it does not smell as good as what it smells then. There are also many educational resources available.
The first site looks at China before unification, from 700 BC until the year 221 when the empire was created. “There are spectacular pieces such as bells, because sound and music were very important in their ritual world, or bottles and architectural elements.”
It also contains what is meant by unification in a territory with various cultures, languages, scripts and religions. From here the types of money are shown, the money set, the lamps, the torch or the belt.
The room closes with an image of one of the ten stones that appeared in the Tang dynasty, already in the seventh century of our era, “which is perhaps the oldest inscription that includes the method of writing standardized in the Qin period.” “. This is the only original piece with two cars, which weigh 1,200 kilos and consist of 3,000 pieces, which by law cannot leave China.
The second place goes to the “world of the dead,” which is the place of warriors. “What things were not created to be shared with us, that we may know what a privilege it is to see this here.”
This space is how soldiers are made. Patterns, raw materials, stages of production, types of pigments and minerals, how clay is formed, how it is lacquered and painted. What is noted in this section is that 25 lacquers were needed to paint one of these figures. A videomapping has also been established in which his first appearance is colored in one of these terracotta soldiers (replica).
“At first it was thought that they were constructed in a certain assembly by parts, but we have shown that this is not the case, but that they produced different cells, each autonomous, which produced the whole warring; which were afterwards carried to the sepulchre.’
China’s Minister of Culture at the opening of Warriors Xian at MARQ. will attend
Tickets and guided tours
Tickets for the exhibition -open until January 2024- can be purchased online and cost 5 coins for a free visit and 8 for a guided visit. Guided tours, for 25 people, are every hour, between 10 am and 6 am, MARQ is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am, and on Sundays and holidays, from 10 am to 2 am, from 10 am to 10 am
Soldiers in third place
Encountered with warriors and horsemen weighing 200 and 350 kilos, he comes to the third room, where they appear in the middle of a circular box that gives them a futuristic air, as if lifted from the earth, on a journey from the past to the present. “The story told to them has been unfolded, this is a moment for all the people who want to see it,” says Marcos Martinón-Torres.
All are different from each other. From the features, to the clothes, the decoration, the hairstyle and the stature. And two figures are joined together: the assistant of the stable and the fisherman.
Likewise, other, much less well-known soldiers from the Han dynasty, “two or three generations after the first emperor.” He also wanted to bury himself with his terracotta soldiers, in this case much smaller, who appear naked because they are wearing real clothes and without weapons because they are made of wood.
And in this last room, In memory, the memory of those who made those warriors a World Heritage Site. “He made ten thousand workers, that is, generally anonymous and forced, into slaves, convicts, and prisoners.” The names of 18 of them are known because “who bothered to write them on a ceramic testicle – one of them can be seen in the exhibition – and we wanted to pay tribute to them to give visibility to the invisible, without whom history did not want to be written”.
