Chinese Terra Cotta Warriors Take Up Guard at Bowers Museum

China's famous Terra Cotta Warriors will live for a while at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. Two thousand years ago, the statue soldiers guarded the tomb of China's first emperor. KPCC's Susan Valot has more.

Susan Valot: In the Shaanxi Province in northwestern China, hundreds upon hundreds of Terra Cotta Warriors fill excavation pits around the tomb of China's first emperor. They're lined up in battle formations; an earthen army, ready to go.

The emperor who united China's warring states for the first time had the warriors crafted more than 2,000 years ago to protect him in the afterlife. Now, 14 of the figures, plus a terra cotta horse and other artifacts from the emperor's mausoleum, are on display in Orange County. Bowers Museum guest curator Albert Dien says it's the largest display of the Terra Cotta Warriors ever to come to the U.S.

Albert Dien: The exhibit is just a small part of what's available in Xi'an and what we hope is that after people see it, they'll go to Xi'an to see the full panoply. But it's very well represented. It has an example of almost of everything that's available there.

Valot: Through an interpreter, archeologist Han Zhao of the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center says the exhibit helps promote understanding and goodwill between China and the U.S.

Han Zhao (speaking in Chinese): In some degrees we can say the Qin terra cottas are the name card of Xi'an city, and it's to symbolize the friendship of China's people.

Valot: For Albert Dien, the exhibit is a chance to see the warriors up close.

Dien: This is a replica of the carriage. See the tassels underneath? It's drawn, it's all bronze. And that's why it survived.

Valot: Dien remembers the first time he saw the terra cotta figures: in 1977, just three years after archeologists made the find.

Dien: As we came around the corner, there was the kneeling archer. And that's when I became so excited because the– it's unimaginable that the ability to create, when nothing had been done like it before, such realism, such– the twisting and kneeling of a body. This is something that, you know, we take for granted, but you have to go back in those days and see, to visualize what it must have meant to create something like this out of, out of nothing.

Valot: Bowers Museum President Peter Keller agrees the awesomeness is in the details.

Peter Keller: You look at the details on these figures – the braids in their hair, the bows in the braids in their hair – every little detail is there. And if you look very closely, each one has a unique pair of shoes. I mean, who would ever think of that?

Valot: Chinese history expert Albert Dien has his own theory on why Emperor Qin Shi Huang ended up with a terra cotta army in the afterlife, rather than bringing along the soldiers themselves. Dien says think of it, a TV show, let's call it... "The Real Housewives of Qin Shi."

Dien: One of the sessions might be some of the generals saying, "You know, when he dies, he's gonna want some of our soldiers to be put into the tomb, because all of his concubines that had not born any sons were put into the tomb. All the workers were put into the tomb. We don't want our soldiers to be sacrificed that way. What can we come up, how can we, what can we do?" And so they came up with the idea of realistic statues. (laughs) It might be, you know? In order to save their troops. Who knows?

Valot: And for Dien, that's part of the magic of the Terra Cotta Warriors. The "what ifs," the unknowns, the discoveries that are still being made around the tomb today. Warriors, boatmen, musicians, even birds and horses, all part the secret world of the royal afterlife, and some of which are part of the exhibit at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. They'll be on guard in Orange County until October.