Monday, January 15, 2007







Terracotta Soldiers

On New Years Day I went to the National Museum of Science here in Taichung. They had some of the terracotta army visiting from China- I think most people have heard of this, it's where an emperor had all these terracotta soldiers made to guard him when he died. Which is better than burying a bunch of human soldiers alive to guard you when you die, I guess.
The display was in Chinese but still pretty cool. We couldn't take pictures in the actual display so this is just stuff from the courtyard. I'm standing in front of a picture of what the excavation site looked like. The random little girl is standing in front of a model of them.
I was always impressed by the sheer number of these things- it really does look like an army- but it turns out the individual soldiers are very detailed. They have different faces, body types, etc. Also the one picture is just a chunk of rock that they brought over to show the state they were found in- I think they were painted originally. There were horses and people who looked like they were from different ethnic groups in China.
Look how cleverly I made the pictures be next to each other instead of stacked in a long line that you have to scroll down to see. I'm not sure how I did that. A few weeks ago this blog website updated to some new & improved thing, and now instead of words telling me what to press I just have little boxes, like in the places where you could click things. Very frustrating- if anyone out there wants to write a blog I would suggest using a different website. I think this one caters to people who want to do really complicated things that involve words like "embed"- I just want to put up words and pictures. I have tried changing the language but it is always rubbish where the words should be, never actual letters. If anyone knows how to fix this let me know.

1 comment:

Gary said...

The Terracotta Soldiers looks very interesting. Maybe when we visit Taiwan, it will still be at the museum and we can see it, too.