The First Emperor of China

by Jonathan Clements

  On a spring day in 1974, the workers’ collective of Xiyang village decided that the weather was good enough to continue the regular well-sinking operation. A work party set out to find a good spot – the region around Mount Li was riddled with underground springs and watercourses, and every little extra helped when it came to irrigating the fields. There was a song in the local area that appeared to acknowledge something below the ground:

  Iron picks chop, one and again

  Dig, dig down to the crystal hall

  Striking fear into the dragon king

  Make him bow

  Make him scrape

  Promise water, thirst to slake

  Yang Peiyan, the diminutive leader, and his lofty relative Yang Wenxue, led their diggers west from the village, through an orchard of persimmon trees to the base of a steep rise. The locals called the area ‘the southern waste’ because neither they nor their ancestors could remember any time when they had been able to get any crops to grow there. Persimmons were the best they could manage, but just because the soil was poor, it didn’t follow that there wouldn’t be water there.

  The two Yangs sketched a circle in the ground with their pickaxes, ready for the next day, when the dig would begin in earnest. Seven members of the Yang family were back the next day, to strip away the thistles and creepers on the ground and began digging, confident that they would eventually break through into the underground watercourse known to head towards a nearby valley.

  Two days later, the Yangs hit earth that seemed unnaturally hard. Although they did not know it, they had reached a wall made by one of the Qin dynasty work-gangs, with rammed earth that had not yielded its consistency for two thousand years. The Yangs, however, persisted, chopping through the super-tough earth until they reached another layer, tinged red and black. This, later archaeological surveys have concluded, was the ash and dust from the great fire that destroyed much of the First Emperor’s mausoleum in the unrest after the death of the Second Emperor. At the time, the brothers thought it could be an old forgotten kiln (which would explain the fired soil), or perhaps even an old foundation from a forgotten building. As digging continued and the Yangs argued over what they were finding, on March 23 1974, 37-year-old Yang Zhifa suddenly found something: a circle of clay that he initially mistook for the neck of a pot. In fact, it was the neck of a terracotta soldier, long separated from its head.

  In the Yangs’ story of their discovery, there are hints of earlier finds long forgotten or suppressed, since it was apparently a local tradition that ancient pots were very useful. Instead of hacking through the soil as they had been for days, the Yangs slowed down, hoping to extract this old ‘pot’ from the earth intact.

  When they could establish that the item they had found was not a pot at all, but a terracotta figure, they assumed that it was a leftover from a local Muslim rebellion. It was only when they finally reached the brick floor of what turned out to be an underground chamber, that they realised they had found something even more interesting.

  When I met Yang Zhifa in 2013, he was living well off the proceeds of being ‘the man who found the Terracotta Army.’ Tall for a Chinese, he was sprightly for a grandfather nearing 80. What was left of his white hair was shorn off in a neat burr, he affected a blue Mao suit and an ostentatiously long cheroot holder. A week did not go by without a journalist or film crew wanting to talk to him about his place in history, and Yang was ever ready to oblige for a fee – my time with him cost about £100.

  There was very little clue from Yang’s demeanour that he could pull down a week’s wages just by getting out of bed in the morning, at least, not until one was close enough to look in his eyes. The dark irises were limned with the faintest edge of blue, a telltale sign that the old farmer sported contact lenses.

  With up to two film crews a day hanging on his every word, and tourists eager to get his signature or calligraphy, Yang was a jealous guardian of his status. He had been in something of a feud with several other Yangs, who wanted to claim equivalent status as co-discoverers – I still suspect that he and his cousins took turns to sit in the museum shop and sign autographs as ‘Mr Yang, who found the Terracotta Army.’ He cherished a photograph of himself with a grinning Bill Clinton, and still scowled at the memory of articles that had claimed the American President had met with an ‘illiterate peasant’. He clutched his adze proudly, showing me the seal of government authenticity that pronounced it to be the very tool that had struck at that fateful terracotta fragment in 1974.

  Yang’s version of events featured a degree of self-figuration – first-person I’s and me’s about what the record usually describes as a group effort, but nonetheless came from the horse’s mouth, in a Shaanxi dialect so thick that I often had to ask him to repeat himself.

  ‘It was hot and it was dry. It was March and there had been no rain all winter, and we needed to sink a new well. There was some low-lying ground with persimmon trees on the plain, and I figured that the water there would be sweeter, so we started digging. When we got down a couple of metres, we hit something. It looked like the top of a pot, the lip around the edge, so we stopped digging.

  ‘I said: “Look, if this is a pot, we might have found an old kiln from the Han dynasty or something. Those pots are still good to use. Let’s keep digging.” So, we edged around it and saw that it wasn’t a pot. It wasn’t a pot because it was decorated really weird, like a suit of armour, and then we found an arm.

  ‘So this is a problem, because the elders hated it when we uncovered old temples or graves. That’s really bad for the feng shui. They made us go back that evening with joss-sticks. We lit incense and chanted prayers in case we had disturbed earth gods or something. But I said to the elders: “You shouldn’t worry that this is something to do with the First Emperor. I mean, it’s two kilometres away from his grave, this can’t possibly be anything to do with that. There’s no way it could be that big.”

  ‘So we went to the cultural office at the museum, and they said oh yes, that looks very Qin dynasty. Bring us the terracotta bits and we’ll give you some cash. They offered me 10 kuai [£1] for every wheelbarrow-load of pottery I could bring them. So we edged around the well and hauled up three cart-loads of the stuff. I took it to the museum and got 30 kuai, but then I had to share it with the other members of the crew and the village. At the end of it all, I got 1.3 mao (13p).’

  The Yangs’ well-sinking exercise had transformed into an archaeological dig and gained him another rival. At another museum on the edge of town, the local Party official also happily signs himself as the ‘man who discovered the Terracotta Army’, on the understanding that Yang didn’t know what he was looking at, and that in an intricate semantic sense, the Terracotta Army was only ‘discovered’ by the person who identified the pottery as a Qin artefact. At the time, however, nobody seriously considered that the pottery uncovered by the Yangs was directly related to the First Emperor’s distant mausoleum. For centuries it had been assumed that the First Emperor’s mausoleum centred on Mount Li itself, and yet the finds of the well diggers were far from it. The well now forgotten, the soil from the initial dig was sifted, unearthing more terracotta pieces, and the fragments of what might once have been crossbow trigger mechanisms.

  By that June, the news was out. Something had been found near the site of the First Emperor’s mausoleum, and if a find of the magnitude of the Yangs’ was present so far from it, the size of the necropolis itself may have been grossly underestimated.

  ‘Then they said we’d found something significant, something of national importance, so it all kind of got taken away from us,’ Yang tells me. His role in the site was forgotten for twenty years, while archaeologists sifted the earth. He confessed that he had done nothing but swing a pickaxe for his life up to that point, and his ability to monetise being the ‘discoverer’ of the Terracotta Army turned problematic. He was once flown to Japan for an academic conference, but was able to little more than trot out his well-rehearsed account of th
at fateful day. Since then, he has observed the slow growth of the museum as a tourist site, and done his best to capitalise on the influx of visitors.

  ‘It’s brought a lot of wealth to all of us in the village,’ he says carefully, ‘and that cheers me up. Yes, I like being famous. It’s better than not being famous. People come from all over and they want to shake my hand and buy my photograph. It’s better than holding a pickaxe.’

  The Terracotta Army, and its impressive scale, was unearthed at an important moment in China’s history. Chairman Mao, who had led the Chinese nation in several ill-advised Great Leaps, was dying, taking stock of his life, and searching for historical parallels. The mysterious First Emperor, who had united China in spite of itself, who had forced unification of currency, language and measurement, who had caused untold suffering in the hope that he could beat all the swords into ploughshares (or statues), was hit upon by Chairman Mao as a fitting historical analogy for him to draw with himself. Even as parties of archaeologists continued to excavate around the Mount Li site, cronies of the Chairman were revisiting old stories and legends of the First Emperor, suggesting that his ultimate achievement had been to unite the workers of China for a greater good – a fitting epitaph for a communist leader, even though the people of Red China were expected to identify less with the emperor than with the disaffected workers who deposed his successors.

  It is expected that the excavations of the Mount Li site will take years, if not decades. Already, a generation has passed since the initial discovery, and still archaeologists have barely scratched the surface. So far, over 7,000 terracotta soldiers have been discovered, many decked out in the studded armour of the First Emperor’s palace guard. Standing at the front were archers and crossbowmen, flanked by more archers, charioteers and infantrymen, with heavily armoured soldiers bringing up the rear. Many of the soldiers are empty-handed, lending credence to the story of Zhang Han’s ransacking of the site in order to mount a defence against rebels. A few still have swords in their hands – still sharp after two thousand years, fashioned out of a rare alloy of thirteen metals. But modern archaeo-metallurgists are obliged to analyse the crossbow bolts, triggers and halberd heads scattered all over – there are simply not enough swords to present scientists with a broad enough sample of data.

  In 1976, archaeologists uncovered two further pits to the north of the first discovery. The L-shaped Pit 2 contained a mixed squadron of warriors, including crossbowmen, infantrymen and soldiers in robes. At its southern end were eight columns of war chariots, complete with terracotta horses, although the wooden chariots have long since rotted, and could only be recreated by guessing what may have sat in between their remaining bronze artefacts. From the layout of the formations, it seems that each chariot functioned as a transport, base and possible supply dump for a group of soldiers. They were not weapons in their own right, but served by attendant spearmen for defence, and may have also carried arrows or quarrels to supply nearby archers.

  To the west end of Pit 2 is a cavalry unit, comprising not only further chariots, but also 108 saddled horses, led by their bridles by men presumed to be their riders. The cavalrymen were armed with crossbows, implying that they were used more as mobile, mounted archers than as knights – the stirrup was invented long after the time of the First Emperor, and its absence made mounted charges less effective. All of the soldiers in Pit 2 seem to be arranged differently from their counterparts. Some are standing to attention as if on parade, while others (the archers) appear to be practising. Whatever their disposition, they, like the soldiers of Pit 1, all faced towards the east, the place of the First Emperor’s conquests, and the origin of the forces that would overthrow his successors.5

  The U-shaped Pit 3 was much smaller than the other two, but contained a command unit. A charioteer stood at the reins of his horse-team, along with three officers. Beside the chariot team, an anteroom led to a stable area, confirming archaeologists’ suspicions that many more pits and symbolic buildings awaited discovery under the modern ground level, dotted all around the mausoleum site. Besides the stables were anterooms guarded by still more terracotta soldiers, armed with strange weapons like adzes, wooden shafts with a heavy, cyndrilical bronze lump, its business end chopped into a rudimentary point like that of a modern drill bit. Such weapons were vicious, heavy-duty maces for use in close combat, with ends designed to punch through the armour of anyone who dared to come so close. Perhaps they were even designed to stun instead of kill, since anyone who made it this far might be a spy or assassin, and could be kept alive for interrogation. Beyond the guards, lay the remains of what had once been a curtain rail, presumably holding up a thick tapestry to separate the command room from eavesdroppers. In the general’s inner sanctum, evidence was found of animal bones; it was intended not merely for strategy meetings, but for victory prayers, and sacrifices.6

  Most notably, however, the command unit’s leading officer did not seem to be present, although Pit 3 sits close to an as-yet unopened tomb, that may contain, or have been intended for, a general – perhaps even one of the associates of the First Emperor who were framed so soon after his death, Meng Yi or even Meng Tian.

  The most lavish armour was reserved for the officer corp, their ranks further denoted by bright coloured scarves, and patterns of two, three or four tassels on the front and rear of their body armour. Leading officers did not have weapons in their hands; instead they rode in their chariots with their large war-drums, carrying batons to beat out signal codes to the men. From the evidence found in the Qin tombs, the act of drumming the signals was done by the generals themselves, so presumably they, too, were the men who obtained the infamous ‘blood for the drums.’7

  Most of the officer class in the Qin army have beards or moustaches, although facial hair is thought to have been a sign of their greater age rather than of a particular fashion worn for the sake of rank. Their hats, however, changed depending on their rank, with pheasant-feather headdresses for the leaders. Many of the soldiers have hair braided in elaborate patterns, suggesting that they wore it habitually long, knotting it into thick mats before battle both to keep it out of the way and afford a little extra protection. Archers’ hair was usually knotted to the left in order to give them a better line of sight if shooting right-handed – it also, presumably, was less likely to block the line of sight of another right-handed archer standing behind. Remarkably, it is even possible to determine a racial origin in many of the warriors – their facial features have much in common with the present-day inhabitants of the region, particularly Sichuan, Shaanxi and other north-western prefectures.8 One of the mysteries facing modern archaeologists is simply why – why would the Qin dynasty go to the elaborate trouble of creating facsimiles of real-world people?

  I believe that the answer lies in the hard-nosed, money-minded pragmatism of Qin era laws, as discussed above in Chapter 4. Is it so far a leap, from institutionalised bribery and the ability to buy one’s way out of trouble, to imagine a wily minister, perhaps Zhao Gao, perhaps Li Si, making the First Emperor’s honour guard an offer they literally could not refuse? They could be buried with their dead master, like the loyal Qin troops of old, or they could offer a facsimile of their earthly body for a fee. When we gaze upon the thousands of verifiably different faces of the Terracotta Army, are we looking at the Qin era’s biggest and most enduring money-making scheme? There is yet no document offering any evidence, but considering the reliance of Qin laws on money, it does seem to be to be the simplest explanation.

  Although the Terracotta Army has, so far, been the most impressive single event, and elements of the main tomb remain a mystery, we should remember that archaeology prizes not just the treasures, but the people who built them. The area of the Qin tomb was home to many thousands of artisans, labourers and slaves over a long period, and hence is still revealing elements of their daily life. The remains of a fishpond were discovered early on, as well as minor finds such as temple bells, and dropped coins. The archaeologi
sts’ wise decision to spiral inwards from the outskirts has uncovered several hundred minor pits, many of which have started to confront our martially-minded perspective on the Qin state. It is harder to talk of a military engine of conquest when one also uncovers a menagerie of beautiful bronze birds, as well as terracotta musicians, acrobats and dancers.

  The Chinese generally refer to the site as Bing Ma Yong, literally ‘the Soldier and Horse Figurines’, since that is what it is best known for – this is why its web address is the somewhat cryptic www.bmy.com.cn. Entrance tickets, however, push the cumbersome English name ‘Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum,’ stressing not only that it contains an entire necropolis associated with an ancient ruler, but that there is also a museum at the site. This appears to be an acknowledgement of a shift in expectations among Chinese cultural planners, who no longer expect the Terracotta Army site to be a single, dimly-recalled childhood memory for local visitors, but a place of frequent pilgrimage. There is now, for example, a gallery at the museum to host visiting exhibitions from abroad, as perpetually touring exhibits of Terracotta Warriors are exchanged for titbits of foreign culture such as a display of Etruscan artefacts from Italy. Moreover, there is increased emphasis on the site as a place of continued discovery, and also as a work in progress.