Although there are many tourist attractions in China that can be rated four-star and five-star in China, there are only a few that are world-famous. The Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin in Xi'an are known as the Eight Wonders of the World, and many foreigners have come to see the style of the Qin generals who have traveled through thousands of years.
Unfortunately, most of today's Qin figurines are clay pottery colors, and the original brilliant colors have dried off, and people can only rely on historical records to restore them, but one color is still difficult to restore.
First, the Terracotta Warriors of The First Emperor of Qin broke through the ground
According to the "Records of History", the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang was designed by li si, the minister at the time, and the general Zhang Handan supervised the construction for 39 years before it was completed. At that time, the emperor had to take care of state affairs and family affairs, but also had to go to the battlefield, accidents were very common, the mausoleum was built in case of emergency, and over time, the emperor ascended the throne to build a mausoleum became a tradition.
The Terracotta Warriors and Horses were made at the same time as the Construction of the Qin Tombs, and they were buried together after the death of Qin Shi Huang.
Many of the things recorded in the history books have been lost in the long river of time, and at first people did not know the specific location of the Terracotta Army tombs.
Until 1974, a farmer in Xiyang Village, Lishan Town, Lintong County, found several pottery figurine fragments when digging a well, they did not know what it was at that time, some looked like human limbs, some looked like human heads, they were frightened, and quickly called the police.
After receiving the farmer's alarm call, the relevant departments immediately thought that the cultural relics might have been found, so they contacted a special historian to excavate. In this way, the terracotta warriors that had been sleeping for a thousand years were found on the east side of the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin.
The first to be discovered was pit No. 1 of the Terracotta Warriors, where experts excavated 8,000 terracotta figurines. There were 3 columns of infantry figurines facing east, each column of 68 figures, which were the forwards of the army formation; followed by a large number of neat chariots and infantry; and finally, on the north and south sides and at the west end, there was a horizontal column, which was the wing guard and rear guard of the army line.
The terracotta warriors and horses as a whole look magnificent, making people feel as if they saw the mighty momentum of the Qin army a thousand years ago, and also lamented that it was no wonder that the Qin Dynasty would unify the six kingdoms.
In the middle of the No. 1 pit infantry there is a high "load-bearing wall", the ancients are very wise, they use such a structure and then place wooden planks, so that the terracotta army is not crushed by the mud, standing firmly in the tomb, but unfortunately later after the rain washed and the fire burned, the terracotta army was damaged to a certain extent.
Next to pit No. 1, experts also dug out Pit No. 2, Pit No. 3 and Pit No. 4, pit No. 2 contained chariots, cavalry, and soldiers, although the number was not as large as pit No. 1, but it made the military formation of the Qin Dynasty troops more clear, and the overall appearance was strict and orderly, which could be attacked and defended.
There are only 68 terracotta warriors unearthed in Pit 3, and there is also a carriage and horse house, which gives people the overall feeling that it should be the headquarters of Pit 1 and Pit 2. Pit No. 4 has no valuable terracotta warriors, filled with soil, experts speculate that it may be because of the continuous uprisings in the last years of the Qin Dynasty, it is too late to build.
Second, people regret that the original painted terracotta warriors have lost their color
Now more and more people come to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors, and everyone laments that so many terracotta warriors are not exactly the same, but many people feel that the terracotta warriors have no color and cannot see the difference. In fact, the terracotta warriors were originally colored, but later they all fell off.
According to the "Excavation Report of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Pit No. 1 of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum 1974-1984", these terracotta warriors were colored when they were first excavated. There are mainly red, green, blue, yellow, purple, brown, white, black eight colors, in addition to different shades of vermilion, pink, jujube red, medium yellow, pink purple, pink green, etc., so that the color is no less than a dozen.
But when the terracotta warriors were dug out within 15 seconds after these colors all fell off, all the terracotta warriors lost their color in only 4 minutes, and experts did not have a way to prevent the colors from falling off, so they could only watch the terracotta warriors become what they are now.
There have been many people who blame experts for failing to protect cultural relics, but in fact, there are other objective reasons for the color of the terracotta warriors, on the one hand, people in ancient times would brush a layer of raw paint before coloring the terracotta warriors, and this substance will change when it comes into contact with the air after a thousand years, and then dehydrate and peel off.
On the other hand, the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Pit was once burned by fire, and legend has it that nearly 300,000 troops were used to destroy and burn the mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin during the Xiang Yu period.
Now there are clear traces of fire in Pit 1 and Pit 2, and fire also has a certain impact on the preservation of cultural relics. In Pit 3, which has not been burned by fire, some of the painted marks on the horses can still be seen.
Later, in order to make up for the regret that the terracotta warriors had no color, National Geographic magazine restored the color version of the terracotta pit map, and there are also painted terracotta warriors in the current museum for people to see. People who saw it were all surprised, because these terracotta warriors were not uniform in their imagination, but dressed in colorful colors, as if they were celebrating a festival.
In fact, the TV drama images we see on TV are all artistic processing, the Qin Dynasty unified the six countries, soldiers must also come from different countries, they have different dressing preferences and hair bun binding methods, at that time the country also required their own equipment.
There is not so much money and resources to unify clothing, so the real appearance of the Qin Dynasty army should be the appearance of color drawings, plus people also see the hair bun of the Chu people when observing the terracotta warriors, which is more telling.
III. The "Chinese Purple" That Is Difficult to Restore
Seeing the colors on the terracotta warriors, many people are also amazed that in ancient times, without modern industry, so many colors could be created.
In fact, these colors are not the dyes we use now, they are all extracted from minerals. For example, red is made of tatsumi, lead, and ochre, and green is made of malachite, and white is made of lead white and kaolin. Many substances are rare, and with the addition of mutual color grading, there are so many colors that we see now.
Although experts have made great efforts to restore the traditional Chinese color craft, there is another color that is difficult to restore until now, that is, "Chinese purple", according to the experts from the sample of the color on the terracotta army, the main component of "Chinese purple" is copper barium silicate, which is a substance that does not exist in nature, so it can be inferred that "Chinese purple" is artificially made.
This is a great discovery, because the production of "Chinese purple" predates the Silk Road by hundreds of years, which shows that our country's craftsmen made it themselves, thinking that if it can be made again, it will definitely amaze the world, but unfortunately, there is a problem when people reproduce this color later.
It turns out that "Chinese purple" is not simply copper barium silicate, which also has quartz, barium and lead compounds, etc., the manufacturing method was lost a long time ago, and people can only see the beauty of this color from the terracotta army, and there is no way to restore it for the time being.