2024-04-27 10:40:45
- Author, Kevin Ponniah
- role, BBC News
-
2 hours
When archaeologist Zhao Kangmin answered the phone one day in April 1974, he was only told that a group of farmers had found some remains while digging a well.
The farmers were desperate for water in the middle of a drought, and had gone three feet when they came across hard red earth. Below, they had received life-size ceramic heads and several bronze arrowheads.
It could be an important find, said boss Zhao, so he should go to see it as soon as possible.
Zhao, a local farmer turned museum curator in China’s central Shaanxi province – who died in 2018 aged 81 – was serious about what could have been.
The Qin era
Zhao knew that figures had been placed in the past in the area near the city of Xian, not far from the tomb of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.
Ten years earlier, He himself received three kneeling crossbows. But it was never certain that they dated from the time of the emperor, who united the Chinese nation for the first time under the short-lived Qin dynasty (221-206 BC).
But what this expert was about to discover was more than anything he had imagined.
Subtitle, Although he never achieved fame, Zhao seemed happy with the recognition he received.
The peasants became one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century: an army of approx. 8,000 terracotta soldiersdesigned on an industrial scale 2,200 years earlier to protect the emperor in the afterlife.
It was a a whole ghost army, with horses and chariots, hidden underground and did not see the living.
Zhao went to the discovery site with a colleague. “We were so excited “We were riding our bikes so fast it seemed like we were flying.”he would later write, in an essay in 2014.
He once told the British historian John Man that he saw “seven or eight pieces, pieces of legs, arms and two heads, near the well” when he arrived.
He said he understood that immediately They are probably the remains of statues from the Qin era.
They told the farmers to stop their work. They came across the pieces weeks earlier and, indeed, They had already sold some of the arrowheads bronze for scrap.
Subtitle, The warriors were found in 1974 near Xian.Subtitle, It is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
The remains were collected and brought to the museum in trucks. Zhao began painstakingly putting the pieces together. Some of them, he said later, were the size of a finger.
After three working days, two terracotta warriors stood before him, each 1.78 meters high.
The fear
Although Zhao was excited by this incredible discovery, he was also nervous. In 1974, China was in the final stages of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, under which the frightened red guards sought to destroy old traditions and ways of thinking in order to “purify” society.
Zhao, as Man said in his book “The Terracotta Army”, was subjected to a “self-criticism” session. in the late 1960s, as someone “related to old things.”
So now, even though the worst excesses of that period were over, Zhao was worried about what would happen to the statues.
Y decided to “keep it a secret”, restore the pieces, “and then wait for the opportunity to report it.”
Subtitle, The warriors and horses were skillfully made in the 3rd century BC. C. under the reign of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of unified China.
But their plans were changed by a young journalist from the state agency Xinhua, who came across the statues while visiting the area.
“He asked: ‘This seems like an amazing find. Why are you not reporting it?“.
Ignoring their pleas, The journalist published the discovery, and the information reached the leadership of the Communist party. However, Zhao’s fear that the relics would be vandalized for political reasons was unfounded.
The authorities in Beijing decided to excavate the site and in the following months more than 500 heroes were found.
A huge mausoleum
As the work continued, the extraordinary scale of the first emperor – a ruthless man who conquered six states to unite China under an imperial system that continued until 1912 – became apparent.
He ordered to create underground project, covering a total of 56 square kmshortly after ascending the throne at the age of 13.
Thousands of warriors were put in battle form, ready to to protect his emperor from what might await him in the afterlife. It was a detailed work, with many different types of skulls, and there were 100 chariots and thousands of bronze weapons.
Subtitle, The discovery of a legion of life-sized terracotta warriors excited China and the world.
The IS The tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang is still sealed. There could be thousands of valuable artifacts inside.
But the risk of opening it and cause irreparable damage whatever is inside has been withheld by the Chinese government until now.
International recognition … but not for Zhao
In 1975, a year after excavation began, it was decided to open a museum on the site. And although The excavations continued during the following years. Spread the word about the size of the find.
Foreign leaders and some tourists started visiting the place.
But it took a few years for the site to gain global recognition. It was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987.
Subtitle, A former president of the United States visited the excavation in June 1998.Subtitle, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began a tour of China in May 2015 in the city of Xian, where the sculptures are located.
Today, the Terracotta warriors are widely recognized as China’s national treasure. But there is a sense that Zhao’s personal role in the discovery was never fully acknowledged. He is not well known in China.
Instead, one of the peasants, Yang Zhifa, who is said to have found the first piece, is introduced to visiting tourists as the finder to the heroes.
For years, he sat in the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, quietly signing books without a smile. It was he, not Zhao, who traveled abroad to tell his story.
In 1998, when US President Bill Clinton visited, it was Yang who shook his hand.
A few years ago he admitted that he did not go to see the reformed army until 1995, when a manager announced the museum gift shop asked him to sign books.
“He told me he would pay me 300 yuan (about US$50 per month). I thought ‘not bad,’ so I came,” she told China Daily. Three other peasants joined him later and their wages were tripled. But everyone complained that They were never adequately rewarded for their discovery, and, in fact, their land was confiscated. to create the museum.
Subtitle, Excavations continue in the fields where the figures were placed.
Three of the seven members of the original group of farmers died in horrific circumstances. One of them hanged himself in 1997, two others They died over the age of 50, without money to pay for medical careaccording to the South China Morning Post.
A local guide, Liu Guoyang, had never even heard of Zhao Kangmin, but said that impostors approached visitors, pretending to be Yang Zhifa or one of the other villagers.
The first to recognize the value of the discovery
Zhao was furious when, in 2004, the four peasants who survived asked to be recorded as the discoveries of the heroes. They didn’t get an answer.
“They don’t want money,” Zhao told China Daily. “Seeing does not mean discovery. The peasants saw terracotta fragments, but did not know they were relics culturally, and even they broke them.”
“I stopped the damage, the fragments were collected and rebuilt the first terracotta hero”.
If he hadn’t shown up, he told Hohn Man, “it would have been a disaster.”
Wu Yongqi, director of the Terracotta Warriors Museum from 1998 to 2007, agrees.
Without it, Wu said, the extraordinary discovery could have been delayed for years.
Subtitle, Zhao collected the fragments and recreated the first terracotta warrior.
Unlike the peasants, who signed books for the tourists at the main Terracotta Warriors museum, Zhao stayed at the much smaller Lintong museum. Even In later years, he could be found sitting next to several heroes he restored, chatting with curious visitors.
Although he never achieved fame, Zhao seemed pleased with the recognition he received, proudly saying that he had been tipped off by a Beijing delegate during the opening dig. he contributed a lot to the country.
In 1990, it was personally recognized by the Council of State and he was granted a special pension. He is survived by a wife and two children.
Zhao’s vision for her own iconic position in Chinese history, no matter what others say, is clear.
At the Lintong Museum, he signed postcards and tourist books with unusual descriptions: “Zhao Kangmin, the first discoverer, reformer, estimator, creator of names and excavator of the Terracotta Warriors”.
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