With the British Museum about to exhibit an unprecedented (outside China) collection of terracotta soldiers from Qinshi Huangdi’s tomb, New Statesman Magazine writes about the First Emperor and his legacy:
Standing next to me on the hilltop is Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, who is here in the name of cultural diplomacy. His mission is to secure the biggest ever loan of treasures from the tomb of the First Emperor, including members of the fabled, 7,000-strong Terracotta Army, guardians of the imperial afterlife.
“The First Emperor was able to dream on a scale that no one else has ever dreamt,” he says with a boyish breathlessness. “No one else in history has tried to create a life-sized parallel universe in which he will rule for ever. So much of what modern China is can be seen as a direct consequence of what that man did. There are very few historical figures who changed the world in such a way that we are still living with the consequences.” [Full text]
[Image via New Statesman]
Read also the Op-Ed piece from LA Times: China’s eternal empire
