XIAN, CHINA — For Sun Shengan, the hundreds of life-size terra-cotta warriors guarding the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi, the emperor who unified China in 221 B.C., are impressive, but sad.
“Look carefully at their faces, and you will see each is different,” Mr. Sun, a former government employee now working as a private guide, said while showing visitors around recently. Yet, “not a single one looks happy. Perhaps because they were too oppressed,” he said, nodding meaningfully.
For more than 2,200 years, the terra-cotta army in the central Chinese city of Xian has stood as a ghostly, underground guard for its tyrannical emperor, a chilling illustration of how “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” as Stephen Dedalus says in the James Joyce novel “Ulysses.”
Read Full Article »For more than 2,200 years, the terra-cotta army in the central Chinese city of Xian has stood as a ghostly, underground guard for its tyrannical emperor, a chilling illustration of how “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” as Stephen Dedalus says in the James Joyce novel “Ulysses.”
