Today we headed into the city to see The First Emperor - China's Entombed Warriors exhibit at the Art Gallery of NSW. In fact there are only about a dozen entombed warriors out of an estimated 7 and a half thousand figures, give or take. The rest of the exhibition was of artefacts dating from the periods leading up to and following the establishment of the first Chinese empire by Qin Shihuang around 221 BCE. The terracotta army is part of a huge (and I mean huge) burial site for Qin Shihuang, and was presumably intended to be some sort of afterlife protection policy.

It was an interesting exercise in discovering a culture which I know far less about than I would like, given that China is now our most significant trading partner and will have an increasingly large role to play on the world stage through sheer weight of population and capital reserves. The other thing about China which sets it apart from most (but not all) cultures is that it has a unique sense of identity which stretches back so far. Most European cultures now are completely unrecognisable compared to what they were 2000 years ago; less so the Chinese culture but a discussion of that subject would extend far beyond the size of a photo caption. (Even one of mine.)

Photography isn't permitted in the main exhibit but they didn't seem to mind people taking shots of this one artefact in the foyer. This is a detail shot of Chariot #2 (the Toyota Camry wagon of its day, no doubt), not quite life scale but still impressive in terms of the detail that went into it. Indeed, when you look at the overall scale of the number of warriors, the amount of labour involved in creating them must have been staggering.

One sour note of the day was the fact that the Domain Car Park jacked its normal Sunday rate of $10 up to $25 because the Tropfest Film Festival was on. I'm sure that even Qin Shihuang wouldn't have done that. Hmm, on the other hand he did bury people alive, so maybe he would have...

Last Year