Seen from afar, the mausoleum is a hill overgrown with vegetation. It is believed that the tomb consists of an interior city and an exterior city. Photo courtesy of Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology (Photo£º China Daily)

    BEIJING, July 11 -- Historical legends tell of a huge area that came under the rule of the Qin Dynasty, where rivers of azoth flowed and whale-oil lamps burned around the clock.

    The first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), Qinshihuang (259-210 BC) was also the first emperor to unite the whole of China under a single empire. Throughout the ages, his mausoleum has intrigued many people, and what lies buried underneath the ground there has aroused the imagination of many others.

    In a 2005 Hong Kong blockbuster, The Myth, Jackie Chan played the role of a Qin Dynasty general and his reincarnation. In his new avatar he becomes a modern-day archaeologist - a Chinese Indiana Jones, who is in search of a meteorite with gravity-defying characteristics. His search leads him down a path where the boundaries between past and present get blurred and his present life converges with his past one. In an earth-shattering affair he raids the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang.

    But this modern-day celluloid myth has very little in common with the real picture. Archaeological technology, which will guarantee that the cultural relics buried in the tomb will not be harmed in the process of an excavation, is a long way away. Thus the mausoleum has not yet been excavated, silently lying in the eastern suburbs of Lintong County, 35 kilometers east of Xi'an, on the Lishan Mountain and overlooking the Weihe River, for more than two millennia.

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