By Shi Rong, Emma Huang
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| Chinese terracotta warriors were displayed in the Terracotta Warriors Museum in Xi'an of Shanxi Province.(Xinhua File Photo) |
TORONTO, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- A group of 18 life-sized Chinese terracotta warriors, accompanied by 232 pieces of other artefacts, will make its debut in Canada this summer, under an exhibition dubbed as "The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army."
Nearly thirty percent of the featured objects never traveled outside China before, Dr. Chen Shen, the senior curator of East Asian archaeology unit in the Royal Museum of Ontario (ROM), told Xinhua.
This national exhibition will start at the ROM and then travel to Montreal, Calgary, and ends in Victoria.
The exhibition showcases one of the most significant archaeological finds in world history: the 1974 discovery of almost 2,000 full-sized terracotta warriors and horses that had been buried in three 2,200-year-old pits. This discovery in China’s Northern Shanxi province came following extensive excavations.
These sculptures, along with other priceless treasures, were found in the elaborate underground tomb complex built to commemorate China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang. It’s believed that as many as 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers and horses in total may have been originally buried.
"Emperor Qin commissioned an army (of terracotta soldiers) to protect him in the afterlife; however, he could never have imagined that, 2,200 years later, his army will travel around the world, but leave him at home," said Dr. Chen Shen, while developing the content of the upcoming exhibition.
"The army is coming to us, and the ROM is ready to be conquered,"quipped Shen.
"Everything in this ROM exhibit is coming from China," Shen told Xinhua, "This Canadian national tour is a newly developed and contextually different presentation than previous, international displays. Many of the artefacts displayed during the upcoming Canadian tour have never before left China. In fact, some have not yet been displayed in any museum in China."
