We finally got around to seeing the Chinese Terracotta warriors at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, just a few days before the exhibit closes.
However, rather than marveling at their alleged beauty and majesty. we were left thoroughly disappointed by what turned out to be a lackluster handful of concrete replicas and long lines of shuffling onlookers.
According to the Museum's web page, the first Chinese Emperor, Qin Shihuang - who lived from 259-210
BCE - conquered much in this life, but his driving purpose was even
greater: He sought to conquer death. In order to achieve immortality, he
built himself a tomb—a vast underground city guarded by a life-size
terracotta army including warriors, infantrymen, horses, chariots and
all their attendant armor and weaponry.
That was no doubt the case, but what was on display was certainly not worth all the fuss. Yes, there were half a dozen of the life-sized figures, but it was hard to get a sense of what the actual tomb full of hundreds of warriors was like from the randomly positioned examples on display in the museum - for that we had to rely on the image projected on the wall.
So it turned out to be a quick 15-minute forced march around the exhibit room, and then another 30 minutes wandering around the same old examples of Indian mostly religious icons and we went off seeking lunch. So much for history eh?
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