Eighth Wonder of the World

Eighth Wonder of the World - The tomb of the First Emperor of Qin - Qin Shi Huang and his terracotta army.

Reportedly there were 8000+ clay soldiers created and buried in the tomb to protect the Emperor in his next life. Emperor Qin made a lot of enemies as he was quite aggressive and waged many wars on neighboring states. Less than five years after his death, the Emperor's tomb was raided by General Xiang Yu for the weapons the soliders held and other items of value. Once they took what they wanted from the tomb, they supposedly busted many of the soldiers and set fire to the tomb causing structural beams to collapse.

The tomb was discovered in 1974 by 4 farmers who were drilling a well. Today only one of those farmers is alive. He comes to the grounds and signs books for sale in the "gift shop" area. Here is a funny little story though. Phil and Jenni bought a book and had it signed. A few days later some friends of their came through and bought the same book and had it signed as well. Now a sign above the farmer's chair says no pictures. In fact Jenni tried when we were there and he flipped out a fan to cover his face. Somehow their friends were able to snap a shot secretly (I guess). When everyone came back to Dalian and were sharing pics, their friends were showing the pic of the farmer to Phil and telling him, "This is the surviving farmer." Phil looked at the pic and said, "Uh, that's not the guy we saw." So they pulled out their books and comared signatures. They didn't match....OH WELL...so we don't know if we saw the real farmer or not....and really it is no big deal...but it does make a great, little story.

So to the pics. Pics 1-5 are various shots in pit 1 (there are three pits available for viewing). Pic 6 is from pit 2 and shows how not all of the tomb is in tact. Pic 7 is from pit 3 showing the collapsed roofs of unexcavated parts of the tomb.