Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy finishes it run on 16 October 2011 so you still have time to visit it before the “end of run rush” comes in. It is at the Asian Civilizations Museum which is just a short walk from City Hall MRT. Lots of museums are around in the area anyway.
I went to the exhibition on a weekday with Avarielle! Plus, since it was a weekday, there were school students on an excursion to the museum.
Before you enter the gallery (you can enter the permanent exhibits too but they don’t have this thing) go ahead and download the app if you have an iphone. Yes, it’s only developed for the iphone. You can try it out on this blog post if you’re not there, I guess.
Just download it from the app store by searching ACM Terracotta Warriors and select the View 3D Warriors Through Your Iphone Camera. I think my picture should be clear enough for you to see something through your phone’s camera.
If you’re not familiar with the layout of ACM, be sure to listen to the counter/ticket lady on the first floor as you will have to go up the stairs (or take the lift) that go about in some turns where you can see the permanent exhibits about South East Asia.
Before you enter though, there are two warriors standing guard near the door. Hahah you can play with them in a way that you can place the puzzle pieces back on them to get them looking in their original state!
There are some items for display, mostly sculptures outside of the gallery if you didn’t buy the ticket to enter this exhibit but only for the rest. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t but yeah, there’s still stuff outside.
Ah, the gallery of the Terracotta Warriors are pretty extensive! Not only you get said warriors, you get other artefacts from the tombs too. Such were the times when objects were handcrafted with ridiculous amount of detail.
The chariot is a replica for it was too fragile to bring it over. The other artefacts were real and thus behind glass cases. There were a lot of those symbols so that if you did download the app, you could read or see something.
Note the clothes of the soldiers. Each had their own role to play, either they led the horses, were guides or wore armour so they could fight.
The archers and other people in the squad! On the other side of these soldiers were also terracotta versions of atheletes and those were built more robust!
This is a carved stone doorway from a tomb in eastern Han dynasty. If you’ve gone through my previous adventures or to any of the museums here yourselves (OR play games like Assassin’s Creed), you might notice this is fascinating! As quoted from the info there:
From Baijiashan village, Suide county, Shaanxi
Aristocratic tombs of the Han dynasty often contained stone blocks carved with scenes in low relief. The lintel shows a hunting scene; the stones flanking the doorway offer views of domestic life. People climb stairs to store goods, a few play musical instruments, and perhaps a wrestling match is underway. Depictions of everyday life mix with fantasy. The roofs are surmounted by large birds, perhaps mythical creatures. Remains of red paint decorate the raised surfaces.
Now… Let’s go back to my episode in Pompeii. I might not have posted a lot of the pictures from that exhibit but it is pretty amazing that in the times before internet or planes and such, you can still see that architecture is nearly similar in terms of style for tombs.
This is a tomb brick from western Han dynasty, 2nd century BCE from Yangling.
Stylised geese and trees decorate this hollow brick, which was found within the Han Emperor Jing’s tomb complex. Ceremonies were conducted in aristocratic tombs in the Han dynasty, which were therefore elaborately decorated. Hollow bricks were widely used, as they were effective insulators against sound and changes in temperature.
If not for the different motifs of geese and the type of tree, I’d think this belonged to the bricks of Egypt!
Engraved pictorial stones were popular in eastern Han dynasty (25-220CE) since they began to replace the tomb figurines in portraying the afterlife, which I guess took up a lot of space or something.
Go check it out while the exhibit is still on. Besides scaled to life terracotta people (and animals), they had smaller ones that had moveable arms or cloth clothes on. The parts may have decomposed, leaving only the bodies without the wooden arms and yeah…
Those are kinda creeptastic especially the ones with their legs apart. They were originally sitting on horse figurines which are gone now.
And that’s it!
Plus, they fixed the information machine thingy. The one for the permanent SEA exhibits! I wonder who the girl is though and if she ever visits the museum for fun and would people go “GASP! It’s the girl from the machine!”.
