Ma Yu is a conservator at the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum in Shaanxi Province. Tens of millions of pieces are scraped off the floating soil, sorted, numbered, compared, and then spliced. They disintegrated into pieces in Ma Yu's hands and gradually became complete.
The first excavation of the Hundred Drama Pits
In 1999, archaeologists from the former Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and conservators from the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum formed a joint team to carry out a rescue excavation of a funerary pit in the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. This excavation is of great significance to uncover the funerary system and design layout of the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin.
The joint team found that the figurines in the pit were scattered very irregularly, with the head of a figurine on the east side of the pit and its feet found on the west side of the pit. Due to the severity of the damage, most of the pottery pieces are almost integrated with the soil, which makes the restoration of the figurines more difficult.
After a year of splicing and restoration, Ma Yu and other conservators worked together to restore the six pottery figurines with more complete fragments.
These six terracotta figurines do not wear armor or battle robes, but are naked on the upper body and short skirts, fat and thin, and have a cute attitude.
Archaeologists initially believe that these pottery figurines are acrobatic figurines that symbolize the entertainment activities of the Qin Dynasty court, so they tentatively designated K9901 pit as a hundred opera figurine pits.
Rejuvenation of magic hands Restoration of cultural relics
At present, there are many funerary pits and tombs with different shapes and contents that have been explored around the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, in addition to terracotta warriors and hundreds of figurines, there are also waterfowl pits.
Like other funerary pits, the waterfowl pits have suffered man-made damage and fires. Cultural relics restorer Ma Yu undertook the task of restoring bronze waterfowl.
After more than a year of patient and meticulous polishing and pasting by Ma Yu, the first bronze crane was finally repaired.
Deciphering the mystery of fingerprints
In the process of debris cleaning, Ma Yu, a cultural relics conservator at the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum, was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a fingerprint inside the pottery piece.
After the staff analyzed the fingerprints, they clearly identified the age, gender and other information of the figurine craftsmen in that year.
Not only the fingerprint information, the entire repair process, Ma Yu is recorded in detail. He said that he made these notes in the hope of being worthy of the ancients, and also hoping that future generations can pass on history and solve more puzzles.
As a conservator, Ma Yu spliced together broken history and gave the cultural relics a second life. With the spirit of craftsmanship, he reproduced these legends. In these legends, we see the glorious civilization of ancient times and the wisdom of the ancients; in the body of cultural relics restorers, we see the spirit of craftsmen that have been passed down to this day.
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Characters, stories
"Struggle for a New Era : Ma Yu"
Producer / Yan Dong Editor-in-Chief / Liu Ming Huang Lijun
Editor / Zhang Lan Su Xiaomeng Zhang Yijia Chen Wanning (Intern)
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