Terracotta Warriors

Days like this make me wonder what Hollywood has done to my receptivity to “the real thing.” We’ve seen it all, from pagodas and the Eiffel tower at Epcot to the crucifixion of Christ on the big screen, WWI, WWII, and Roman gladiators dying in front of thousands of cheering peasants. I’ve seen cruise ships half the length of Manhattan docked on the west side highway and have flown in airplanes the size of football fields, watched “Planet Earth” on BBC and feel like I’ve seen just about every wonder in the world.

And then I come to China and I walk on the Great Wall, and I check it off my list. OK, I’ve been there, done that. And this Monday, I walk into a massive hangar about 30km East of Xi’An, and I shuffle and nudge my way past the crowd of people lined up against the railing below the “no tripods and flashes” sign, and I get to the front and lean over the ledge and I wait for my breath to be taken away. Instead, it’s merely “wow.” This is exactly what I expected.

Thousands upon thousands of warriors lined up single file, shoulder to shoulder, in rows and columns, in battle formations, with weapons, horses, and the occasional carriage. I’d seen pictures of it. We’ve all seen the pictures. How many first impressions and “breathtaking” moments have been spoiled or tainted with expectations, with movies or documentaries, postcards and guidebooks?

Not to say that the experience was not extraordinary; it grew on me as I went alone, as I noticed the individual buns on each of the soldiers heads and how they were different, if only slightly, but different nonetheless; the hands and faces and how some were sad, stern, ready, scared, and how each body said something different while looking, from afar, exactly the same. Warriors, each its own creation, each part of a mass yet massively one and its own.

And to think of the farmer who, thirty years prior, shuffling along with his ox and ho, uncovered a small clay hand, or a wheel, or a buttress, and unknowingly uncovered a history unknown, an unrecorded and unparalleled human creation. And to think of the man for whom every pound of clay was shaped, molded, and carved to protect, to guard in his afterlife, to stand by and face East against the Mongols, towards his creation, his Great Wall of China. And to think of the thousands of people who have flocked from all around the world to gaze and wonder and compare to the pictures and postcards they had seen before. And it grew on me. And I checked it off my list. How many more “wonders” will I see?