08.21.08
The Terra Cotta Army at the Bowers
When Brian and I went to London last May, we visited the British Museum. We really enjoyed that museum and went back a few times because there was just so much to see there. During our first visit to the British museum we saw Terra Cotta Warrior trinkets being sold in the gift shops. I didn’t know they were on display there, so was really jazzed to see them. What we found was that the exhibit had already left. We had just missed them, wah.
The other week, I was at my parents’ house and saw some of their travel booklets lying around. Leafing through one of them I noticed an advertisement for the Terra Cotta Army exhibit at the Bower’s Museum in Santa Ana, which is about 45 minutes away from us! Ack! It turns out that the exhibit has been on display here since May 18. Apparently, we flew to the UK just as the exhibit was flying to the U.S., ha ha! And where have I been that I didn’t know it for three months? Anyway, so since my boys recently watched The Mummy movie, it was a perfect time to check out the Bowers. While we all know that the story of how the sand army came to be in the Mummy movie is completely fiction, it still helped to perk the interests of my sons to check out these clay figures. So yesterday we all hopped in the ‘ole bat mobile and headed out to the Bower’s Museum. Of course I had to take my trusty camera. . . and here are me boys out in the front of the museum.
Now I enjoyed this exhibit, so don’t get me wrong when I say that I also had some disappointments. The first one is that it was very crowded, so that it wasn’t a relaxing visit. But okay, that’s to be expected, why should I be the only one who wants to see it? Ha! Maybe it’s my getting older, but I like to leisurely take my time going through exhibits. The second, and really my biggest disappointment, was that there were no picture taking allowed inside the museum, wah. Now that was a big drag because I would have really liked to have taken some of those terra cotta figures and the gem display, which had some really amazing gem stones. You would hope with the price for entrance we would at least be allowed some pictures. Funny to have such capitalistic practices coming from a communist country, ahem. I would have liked to take a pic of the tanzanite and a few other stones, but oh well, at least I got to see them since the exhibit is supposedly leaving this Sunday. So did I get any pictures at all? Well, I found there were some things I could take pictures of, and that was of pictures of some of the terra cotta figures. So here’s my picture of a picture of one of their figures.
Now for a little bit of what I learned yesterday that I had not known before. Apparently, there were about 7,000 figures found at this site, which is located in the Shaanxi province in China. Here’s a map taken from the Australia-China Chamber of Commerce website of where the Shaanxi province is. Shaanxi province is shown in black.
Naturally the best exhibit of these figures can be seen in China. Here’s a link for more detailed info of the exhibit in China. From that website, it’s obvious that there is much, much more to see there than what we see with their traveling exhibit.
Now how accurate the information is that we get from all these archeologists is anyone’s guess. But one thing that does seem to be agreed upon universally is the practice of burying all kinds of things with the deceased supposedly in hopes of providing them with all the necessities needed for their journey in the afterlife. And naturally, the more prestigious a person, the more necessities he needs and can afford. Thus kings tended to have very elaborate burial sites. The site where the Terra Cotta Warriors were found is no different, but exceptionally larger and more detailed than the average Joe. It is believed that these terra cotta figures belonged to the burial site of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of all of China. It is said that he came to the throne at the age of 13. And my initial thought was, “that explains all those clay figures, ha!” Okay, that is passing judgment a bit too prematurely, but leave it to a child to imagine such an endeavor of making thousands and thousands of clay soldiers along with all the accouterments. I imagine a child still wanting to play with toy soldiers and, boy, with all the money and power, he can have the biggest toy set around. . . Okay, no, that’s not what they were supposedly for. They were for Emperor Qin’s journey in the afterlife, even though they say he was searching in life for the elixir for eternal life here on earth, he was evidently preparing for death, hmmm. Well, at least it’s better burying him with a bunch of clay figures that actually killing off real people to bury with him. I’ve read of other burial sites where that practice was done.
Eh, moving right along, another bit of info that surprised me was that when these figures were found, most of them were broken into pieces. From all the pictures I’ve seen in passing, I was under the impression that they were uncovered all lined up as shown in so many pictures. Well they may have been lined up like that in times passed, but apparently when the tomb was discovered, most of the pieces were shattered or broken with only a few intact figures. Apparently, the mausoleum was originally housed in a wooden structure, which later was set on fire. The fire weakened the structure causing the roof to collapse in on the figures inside and shattering them. What we see today are the figures pieced back together. Wonder if any heads are on the wrong bodies? LOL
Another thing that shattered my pre-held belief was that the faces of each figure was not a representation of an actual person in real life. Apparently, they had molds of about 100 heads or so that they just altered features from. So while the soldiers all have different faces and other details, they are not representations of an actual person of what I had heard before. How do these misinformations spread?
And yet another thing I learned was that there were not only soldier figures, but also other workers and civilians as well as animals and carts and horses and such. All I had known about were the horses and soldiers.
Well, there is a lot more than I can possibly cover on this tiny blog post, but for anyone interested, there are plenty of sites online to read for more information and pictures. The only pictures I was able to take were just goofing around, ha! Here’s a pic of one of the items sold in the gift store.
My flash washed out the price tag hanging around his neck. Here’s a closer clip of that tag.
In case it isn’t easily read, that price tag is $1,875.00, oye! I don’t know about your house, but that would be an expensive coat rack for my house, ha!
But that’s not all they sold in the gift store. They didn’t just think of the adults, but there was a bunch of little things for the kids, too. Here’s my son trying out some of their stuff.
Eh, heheheheh! I was just digging in the barrel to find one for me when I got a tap on my shoulder. This was a “better” picture moment, so I took it!
Talk about a great costume! This guy looked like a statue, but he was able to walk around scaring all of us unsuspecting visitors, ha ha! I bet lots of people got great pictures with this guy in different poses. He walked around silently with that mysterious smile stopping every now and again for us to take pictures.
We took off for lunch, then checked our their kids museum a couple blocks down. It was really for very little kids, but we amused ourselves a bit there anyway. Matthew especially enjoyed the music section with their variety of drums.
Matthew and his dad banged around a bit there, while Andrew, Aaron, and I went around touching everything that we could. That’s the nice thing about going to the kiddie section. There were quite a few things to keep kids occupied there including a fantastic wardrobe section. I didn’t want to butt in amongst all those kids in there trying on different outfits, not to mention I was probably too big for many of the costumes,anyway, heheheh. But I managed to fool around with some of their props such as this one.
Since I recently finished the House of Earth trilogy, this prop suited me just fine as I could pretend I was a farming peasant. Actually, looking at this picture, I think I could really pass for one, too, if I had the right attire!
They also had lots of face masks. This was one of my favorites.
Afterwards, we did head back to the Bowers to see their other normal exhibits. While we did get to see some of it, the boys (mainly the two younger ones) started to get a bit grumpy and wanted to go home. So we didn’t get to see the whole museum, sigh, but it was still a nice day, anyway.
The Bodyworks Museum is still here. . . I’m not sure yet, but I’m considering visiting that one before it leaves.
Marlakins
