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szdaily -> Culture -> 
Bronze horses, chariots from Qin get new home
    2021-05-20  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

IF China’s first emperor, Qinshihuang of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), were still alive, he might notice that some elements of his underground army have left their Terracotta Warrior comrades this week.

A newly built museum designed to exhibit the bronze chariots and horses excavated from the emperor’s mausoleum opened to the public in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, on Tuesday.

The idea is to highlight the objects’ historical value and enable tourists to more easily and clearly understand the period. Previously, the chariots and horses were exhibited in a showroom of the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum and not far from the renowned Terracotta Warriors, where tourist traffic was heavy. The new museum is expected to ease congestion.

During this year’s May Day holiday, the mausoleum site museum received 299,342 visits. The new museum is just 240 meters from the chariot excavation site, which helps give visitors a firsthand experience at an archaeological dig.

“The new museum will make it convenient for tourists to see the ruins and give them a sense of having an on-site experience,” said Li Gang, director of the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum.

For the relocation to the new museum, the Qin bronze chariots and horses were disassembled into some 100 parts or assemblies, packaged in soft padding and then sealed in dozens of boxes.

“Each set of relics had been packed tightly in boxes and will be unpacked at the new museum,” said Dang Shixue, a researcher who focuses on the chariots and horses at the site museum.

To better preserve and exhibit the bronze pieces in the new museum, Li said, the display cabinets are sealed and have constant temperature and humidity control.

Construction of the new museum began in late December 2017. On International Museum Day, which falls on Tuesday, it was opened to the public for a trial run. The entry fee is included in the package of the mausoleum site museum, with no additional fees charged. Free shuttle buses to ferry tourists from the gate to the new site are provided.

The museum occupies about 8,000 square meters.

As with the Terracotta Warriors, the bronze chariots and horses are burial objects and are widely believed to resemble the real imperial chariots and horses used by Qinshihuang.

Two sets of chariots and horses were unearthed in December 1980 by an archaeological team from the Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum. Each is about half the size of a real one. They were found in broken pieces, and experts at the museum spent about eight years restoring them.

(China Daily)

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