What was that thirteen year old thinking?

What was that thirteen year old thinking, that adolescent named Qin? Surely, planning one's funeral is not on the minds of most teenagers, most of whom are still psychologically immortal. But before exploring Qin's fears about mortality and his insurance plan for immortality, consider this tyrant's imagination, an imagination that has in turn captured the imaginations--and cameras--of millions of us around the globe.

Jim Curley photograph

 He was just an ordinary king among the warring states for most of his teenage years, but he declared himself emperor of China (the name of which is arguably derived from his - Qin/Chin) in 221 BC. In just 15 years he brutally squashed whatever might be in his way, but he also did utterly amazing things to unify and establish the nation of China. (I wonder, does it take a tyrant to do things on such a grand scale?)

• establishing the first imperial dynasty in China after unifying the country
• starting the Great Wall (and asserting control over a massive labor force to do so)
• standardizing currency
• standardizing units of weight and measurement
• standardizing the width of an axle to complement the building of a national roadway
• establishing new norms for language

 But what has fascinated millions of people in the last fifty years is his insurance plan for his death--the necropolis for his tomb in Xi'An and the four pits around it, three of them containing thousands and thousands of life-sized, individually crafted terracotta warriors. But we're told that he wanted entertainment as well as protection in death, and he arranged to have acrobats, musicians and strongmen in other pits. To produce these individually crafted figures on such a large scale required not only the technology, but also management--including what must have been mass production of the arms, legs, and eight or so general faces, each of which were then individually finished with particular features. These warriors, some standing near their horses, were placed underground with real weapons, including steel swords plated with chromium to keep them lethally sharp--to this day.

But suppose you weren't a megalomaniac--just an ordinary person imagining a little world to accompany you to the hereafter. Would you think to have rivers (flowing with mercury to look real)?

Two millennia later, Xi'An is still an amazing place. A wall that once encircled the medieval dynasties is still there, enclosing the ancient buildings and shutting out new Chinese architecture on steroids. The wall is wide enough to cycle around on bikes, from which one can look through turrets a thousand years old to see plenty of those metal cranes populating every modern Chinese city.

 Above and below tour members pause for pictures atop the wall.

Jim Curley photograph.

Today Xi'An offers the best jiaozi I've yet had--look closely (above) and you'll see the little ducks. Below tour members wait on a shawl for the train from Xi'An to Beijing. (All this was over two weeks ago.)

Ulrike Klaus photograph