Last month, more precisely, on May 16, Zhao Kangmin, the man who discovered the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang, passed away.
Fast forward 44 years, when the Terracotta Warriors, which we later called the Eight Wonders of the World, were still quietly sleeping on the Loess Plateau in western China, waiting to be discovered.
In 1974, villagers in Xiyang Village, Lintong County, Shaanxi Province, began digging wells to fight drought, but they successively pulled out some human pottery pieces from the soil, fragments of head, body and limbs. The unexpected discovery left the villagers puzzled and panicked.
The villagers made a phone call for help from Zhao Kangmin, then director of the Lintong County Cultural Center. When he received the call, he immediately rushed to the scene.
Who knows, this trip actually opened the prelude to the excavation of a huge underground army.
1.
The villagers drilled a well,
Everywhere are the heads, bodies, limbs and fragments of potters
Xiyang Village, Lintong County, Shaanxi Province, 1500 meters west of the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin. In 1974, when there was a major drought in Lintong, Shaanxi, a production boom of digging wells to water the land and resist drought and protect seedlings rose in various places. When the local villagers dug the well, they dug out the pottery pieces known locally as "Wa Shenye".
They called Zhao Kangmin, who was then the director of the Lintong County Cultural Center: "Old Zhao, you come quickly, There are many tile people digging wells in Xiyang Village, whose heads are bigger than real people, and there are copper arrows and Qin bricks." ”
The special location of Xiyang Village near the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin, coupled with his professionalism in research for many years, made him aware that these things were not simple. He immediately put down the matter at hand and flew all the way to the scene of the well.
Zhao Kangmin was stunned by the scene at the scene. On the drilling site of the persimmon garden at the foot of Lishan Mountain, the head, body, limbs and fragments of potters can be seen everywhere in the new soil, as well as many gray-black bricks, and occasionally some copper arrows can be found.
After inquiring, he learned that the well had been dug a few weeks ago. Some villagers have secretly taken back some cultural relics, and the way of handling them makes people cry and laugh. Some people use Qin bricks as preparatory bricks for building houses at home, some people put a straw hat on the head of the pottery figurine and support it in the field to scare sparrows, and some people sell copper arrows directly as rags for a few cents.
Site of early archaeological excavations
Zhao Kangmin immediately went down to the bottom of the well to distinguish the scene, and after analyzing the soil structure and the relatively complete pottery pieces, an intuition told him that this was a relic of the Qin Dynasty, a relic related to the mausoleum of the first emperor of Qin.
"Township party members, although the fight against drought is urgent, this well cannot be opened for the time being." Zhao Kangmin immediately stood on the high mound, ripped open the high-noise door unique to the Qin cavity and said loudly to the crowd, "These 'wa gods' are treasures, it may be the funeral products of Qin Shi Huang, let us first find out its origin." ”
Zhao Kangmin brought back the fragments of the limbs of the soldiers and spent three days carefully piecing together two clay figurines with a height of 1 meter 78. Zhao Kangmin once wrote a self-described article "The Beginning and End of the Discovery of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang", in which he described the specific situation at that time: "With the copper hammer and the Qin brick, the immediate arbitrariness (sic) was the burial pit for the Qin warrior figurines", and after the on-site inspection, "it was confirmed that my arbitrariness was accurate".
Zhao Kang used broken tiles to repair the terracotta warriors
"April 26 ... At about 16:00, the scene was cleaned up, and all the cultural relics were loaded into three frame cars, and the original team sent them to the county cultural center. That night, all the fragments were sorted and lined up to clean the stubble. On April 27, the bonding began with epoxy resin glue, and the mutilations were filled with plaster, and for three consecutive days, two samurai figurines were finally glued. Under the repair of Zhao Kangmin, the first terracotta warriors were able to stand up again.
This is two Qin warrior figurines, showing their appearance to the world for the first time: height 1. 78 meters, wearing a battle robe, belts tied around the waist, legs tied to the vine, feet and square mouths in unison, arms drooping, five fingers of the left hand together, half-held right hand, thumb upturned.
During the period when Lin Anwen, a reporter from the Xinhua News Agency at the time, returned to Lintong to visit his relatives, he saw the terracotta warriors repaired by Zhao Kangmin. After returning to Beijing, Lin Anwen immediately wrote an internal reference to "A Batch of Qin Dynasty Warrior Clay Figurines Unearthed from the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang". Published on June 24 in the People's Daily's Compilation of Situations, the article pointed out: "The discovery of these warrior figurines is of great value for evaluating Qin Shi Huang and studying the Confucian struggle and the politics, economy, and military of the Qin Dynasty." ”
Comrade Li Xiannian, then vice premier, made an important instruction: "It is recommended that the Cultural Relics Bureau and the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee consult and take prompt measures to properly protect this cultural relic." ”
And that's how things unfold: media coverage, the entry of cultural relics teams, the establishment of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum... Since then, the 8,000 terracotta warriors that have been silent for a thousand years have jumped up from the western part of China and are about to shine in the world.
2.
This Shaanxi man who discovered the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang,
Who is it?
The Terracotta Warriors were first identified as cultural relics and restored
The Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang became the most prominent part of Zhao Kangmin's archaeological career, and his archaeological career was far from it.
He has been engaged in cultural and archaeological work for more than 40 years, discovering, participating in, presiding over and excavating the ruins of the original settlement of Jiangzhai, the No. 1 pit of the Qin Terracotta Warriors, the ruins of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Ben Temple, the stables of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, the Tang Hua Qing Palace Yu Tang Ruins, the Tang Qing Temple Above the Stupa Underground Palace, the Guanshan Tang Tomb, the Ming Liu Mao Stone Chamber Tomb, etc. He has written and published monographs such as "Interesting Stories of Lishan Mountain", "Lishan Scenic Spots", "Lintong County Chronicle of Cultural Relics", and "Lintong Stele Stone". He has published more than 40 papers and briefings in journals at or above the provincial level.
"Half-way monk, no academic qualifications, no diplomas ... If I want to talk about literature and archaeology, I am blowing fire with a rolling pin and know nothing. In the preface to the book "Archaeological Career", Zhao Kangmin recalls his experience of entering the industry.
An archaeological work written before Zhao Kangmin
In the 1950s, veteran high school students like Zhao Kangmin were already "cultural people" and "intellectuals". After layers of screening, he was recruited to work as a technical supervisor at a construction company in Xi'an. Unexpectedly, he was sent back to his hometown for labor training. Returning to the hot land where he was born and raised, the change of fate determined that he never left Lintong for the rest of his life.
Zhao Kangmin initially engaged in cultural propaganda work in the People's Commune, and in 1961, on the recommendation of others, he went to the county cultural center to be responsible for archaeology and art work. This work transfer made Zhao Kangmin the first generation of pioneers in the cultural and expo undertakings at the county level in Shaanxi.
Lintong, located in the eastern part of the Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi Province, has a long history and was once the land of Gyeonggi, and is rich in cultural relics resources. However, in 1961, when Zhao Kangmin was transferred to the Lintong County Cultural Center to take over the work of cultural relics and archaeology, the local cultural and cultural undertakings were almost blank, and there were only scattered cultural relics in the warehouse.
Zhao Kangmin knew very well in his heart that the key to starting a career from scratch was to consolidate the basic work, and the most urgent task at the moment was to find out the bottom number of Lintong's cultural relics work.
Lintong, Shaanxi
As the only staff member of the cultural relics group of the county cultural center at that time, he carried shovels, pickaxes, drawing and photographic tools every day, and rode a dilapidated bicycle to "touch the bottom of the family" in the fields and mountains. Every time he received a cultural relic, he was like a child "reading pictures and reading", comparing it with professional publications until he became acquainted. In the era of lack of information, he copied the two major copies of the Zhong Dingwen published in "Cultural Relics" and "Archaeology" word for word, and attached expert interpretations to become a Golden Dictionary. Day after day, I passed the entrance barrier.
When he was thirsty, he picked up the clear spring in the mountains to drink, and when he was hungry, he went to his hometown to beg for porridge to fill his hunger, Zhao Kangmin traveled to more than thirty townships, rode three bicycles, wrote down 500,000 words of investigation notes, and found more than 40 historical sites and tombs. Because he went in the wind and rain all year round, the original tall and white Guy Guan often ended up with a dirty face, a dark face, and ragged clothes.
After Zhao Kangmin entered the cultural and bo industry, he was like a Guanzhong "Qinchuan cow" who worked hard and worked hard, tirelessly pioneering in the development of Lintong's cultural and bo industry.
3.
Lifetime unknown,
He returned to the land of Shaanxi
"He spent his whole life in the archaeology of cultural relics and gave his life to the cause of archaeology." Li Meixia, the former director of the exhibition department of the Lintong Museum, recalled him like this.
Li Meixia worked with Zhao Kangmin for more than 20 years, and remembers the first time she saw Zhao Kangmin in the storeroom in 1976: a thin black man crouched on the ground, carefully examining the broken pottery pieces on the ground.
Not good at words, not paying attention to eating and wearing, usually either squatting on the ground to study cultural relics, or burying his head in front of piles of materials and manuscripts, hungry, he bites into a few mouthfuls of steamed buns with green peppers, which is the impression that Zhao Kangmin left to his colleagues.
When his granddaughter got married, Zhao Kangmin wrote in the study
On May 16, 2018, the old man died of illness, and Zhao Qi, the second son of Mr. Zhao Kangmin, said that his father devoted his life's energy to the cause of cultural relics protection, and in the old man's study, there was also a book manuscript that was being revised.
But what makes Zhao Kangmin worthy of his life's pride is the story of his encounter with the Terracotta Warriors.
In the Lintong Museum in Shaanxi, where he had worked for a long time, Liang Fang, the director of the exhibition department, preserved a manuscript of Zhao Kangmin, which was ten centimeters thick, in which he described his fate with the Qin figurines as follows: "Near the water tower platform first get the moon." As a grassroots archaeologist, I have the privilege of taking the lead in scientifically discovering, identifying, restoring, naming and testing the No. 1 pit of the Qin figurines, and unveiling the secrets of this huge underground kingdom army of the Qin Dynasty.
Even though he was nearly ancient, every morning he would walk three or four miles to the museum, sit in front of several Qin figurines he had restored in his capacity as a cultural relics expert and consultant, and tell the audience about the process of the discovery of the Qin Terracotta Warriors and the related problems in the excavation of the Qin Terracotta Warriors.
Someone once asked him bluntly: "Is there a reward in the museum?" "Nothing!" He replied dismissively, "It is my choice without regret to be able to do something for Lintong's cultural relics tourism cause and do some service work for the audience." ”
At the Lintong Museum, when he signed postcards and books for tourists, he would write a long drop: "Zhao Kangmin, the first to identify, restore, name and test excavate the terracotta warriors."
Mr. Zhao Kangmin
The eulogy "Deeply Remembering Mr. Zhao Kangmin" published on the official website of the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum reads: "Being able to achieve such impressive results is inseparable from the hard work of a group of early pioneers like Mr. Zhao Kangmin.
Today, he returns to the land of Guanzhong and lives with those ancient potters and old things.