260 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
a civil religion that formed the moral foundation for Chinese civilization
throughout the ages. But this did not happen immediately. His followers over
the next several centuries kept his teachings alive by compiling his sayings and
writing extensive commentaries on his insights. Eventually his tomb became a
shrine, a center where lectures, festivals, sacrifice, and worship were conducted
by his later followers, including princes and ministers from Han times onward,
right up to the present. But before Confucian teachings came to dominate
social values, a major political upheaval was to occur: the conquest of all the
small, bitterly contesting domains and the founding of “China” as a centralized
state under the genius of Qin Shihuang.The First Emperor and the Unification of China
The First Emperor has always had a venerable place in Chinese history, but
he came alive in our age in 1974 when members of an agricultural commune
were digging a well not far from Xi’an. Thirteen feet down they were aston-
ished to encounter a life-size terra-cotta warrior. This was not the first time
farmers had encountered buried warriors. In 1914, as a farmer and his son
were digging a well in the same place, a terra-cotta warrior emerged from the
mud. As they kept digging, they broke through a watertight layer into an empty
chamber, causing the water to suddenly drain away. Thinking they must have
uncovered a demon, they dug it out and left it to decay in the elements. But by
1974 Chinese farmers were less worried about demons. Excavations began two
years later, and eventually 1,100 warriors emerged into daylight after 22 centu-
ries. They were the army of Qin Shihuang.
This site has been only partially excavated, awaiting better methods as
archaeology continues to mature as a science, and also out of respect for the
dead emperor. Probably an additional 5,000 soldiers are still buried. But of
those already excavated, the world has been astonished. Two hundred are the
vanguard of the emperor’s army, armed with crossbows. There were squads of
spearmen, and files of archers, some resting on their knees. There are chariots,
infantry, and cavalry, the horses and chariots at half-size scale. Most remark-
ably, each face is unique, as if every soldier had stood for his own sculpture.
This diversity, however, was the ingenuity of ancient Chinese craftsmen who
worked from a number of separate molds for eyes, mouths, noses, beads, head
shapes, and the like. By mixing and matching they made it look like thousands
of distinct individuals. Qin Shihuang’s actual tomb under a nearby earthen pyr-
amid has not been opened, though ancient historians described its contents:
The tomb was filled with models of palaces, pavilions, and offices, as well
as fine vessels, precious stones, and rarities. Artisans were ordered to fix up
crossbows so that any thief breaking in would be shot. All the country’s
streams, including the Yellow River and the Yangzi, were reproduced in
quicksilver [liquid flowing mercury] and by some mechanical means made
to flow into a miniature ocean. The heavenly constellations were shown
above and the regions of the earth below. (Topping 2013:5)