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China's ancient capital Xian both a living museum and ultra-modern city

By Jack Souther By the time our jet had climbed through the dense layer of brown gloom into clear air over central China the city of Beijing and its millions of smog-spewing cars was many miles behind.

By Jack Souther

By the time our jet had climbed through the dense layer of brown gloom into clear air over central China the city of Beijing and its millions of smog-spewing cars was many miles behind. At first only the tops of the mountains rise above the polluted air that fills the valleys like the tentacles of some giant organism draped across the land. But finally, as we continue southwest on our way to Xian, the last of the smog enveloping China's capital city is left behind and the Taihang Mountains stretch out to the horizon under a pale blue sky.

It's 900 km, about a two-hour flight on China Northwest Airlines, from Beijing to Xian. Most of the route is across a drab landscape of deeply eroded, brush-covered mountains and dry valleys. I search the barren landscape for signs of habitation — a village, a house, a road — but there is little evidence of a human presence in this desolate, water-starved region of China. Descending into the Yellow River valley and crossing into the province of Shaanxi is like entering a different world — a world transformed by water. The pilot banks into Wei River valley, a major tributary of the mighty Yellow He, and begins his final approach into Xian. Below us the bench-lands are covered with a checkerboard of lush fields and the Quinling Mountains on our left are green with patches of forest.

The rich agricultural land of the central Shaanxi plain is often called "the cradle of Chinese civilization," a place where human habitation can be traced back more than a million years. A 6,000-year-old neolithic village has been unearthed on the eastern outskirts of Xian and, long before China was unified, Shaanxi is where rival fiefdoms battled one another during the "warring states period". When Qin Shihuang unified China in 221 BC and declared himself its first emperor the city of Xian became China's capital. And for more than a thousand years, through the reign of 11 subsequent dynasties, it remained the political, economic, and cultural centre of China.

Today Xian, the largest city in Northwest China, is the capital of Shaanxi Province. According to Xio (just call me Joe), our local guide, its eight million residents have a rather superior attitude and righteously regard themselves and their city as the centre of Chinese culture. "In Beijing people think only about making money," he says, "but here in Xian we are more focused on education, art, and philosophy. I will show you many wonderful things," Joe promises.

As the eastern terminus of the legendary Silk Road, Xian has always been a cosmopolitan city — a gateway between the Middle Kingdom and the rest of the world. Along with exotic goods from Central Asia, India and Europe the great camel caravans brought in new ideas, exposing China to the influences of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. The Great Mosque of Xian was established by Muslim traders and craftsmen who came in with the caravans and stayed. It is now one of the biggest in China and the centrepiece of Xian's thriving Muslim quarter. Buddhism, too, was imported to China through Xian's open door and, at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Joe tells us the story of Xuanzang. "He was a great monk who, in 629 AD, went on a 16-year pilgrimage to India to study Buddhist philosophy. When he returned he translated many Buddhist Scriptures to Chinese. This temple was built in his honour and to store his work. The monks named it when they saw a goose fall from the sky and thought it represented Buddha."

True to his word, Joe did show us "many wonderful things."

We followed him up a set of stone stairs leading to the battlements of the city wall which dates back more than a thousand years to the Tang Dynasty when Xian, along with Rome, Athens, and Cairo, was one of the four largest capital cities in the world. "The wall is 15 metres high and 12 metres wide at the top," Joe tells us as we watch a group of joggers trot past. "They can't go all the way around yet," he adds, "parts of it are still being repaired but the government is working on a plan to reconstruct the full 14 km of the old wall. They are also restricting the type of building inside the wall — only houses that are lower than the wall itself will be allowed."

Outside the wall the city is throbbing with activity — traffic, new construction, and sadly the fallout from its coal-fired generators. But, perhaps more than any other city we visited in China, Xian has embraced tourism and found a balance between the protection of its natural heritage and the expansion that is sweeping modern China. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the Terra-Cotta Museum.

In March, 1975 Yang Zhifa was digging a well near his village of XiYang when he came on some fragments of pottery and bits of bronze. What he found turned out to be one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century. A few metres beneath the surface a huge army of clay warriors, supported by horse-drawn chariots and armed with bronze weapons, had been keeping a silent vigil for more than 2,000 years. There was no historic record of their presence and, until Yang passed his handful of broken pottery to the village headman, no one knew they were there. Three months after his discovery archaeologists unearthed the first of the Terra-cotta warriors and in 1979 the Terra-Cotta Museum was opened to the public.

Located 1.5 km from the burial mound of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang, the Terra-Cotta Museum is the largest on-site museum in China. Beneath the enormous glass and steel domes that now cover the excavation pits an army of more than 8,000 life-sized china figures faces east, prepared to intercept any threat to their eternal emperor. Hundreds of crossbow bearers in the front line are backed up by thousands of armored soldiers holding spears, and behind them 35 chariots are harnessed to their clay war-horses.

Qin Shihuang, who deployed this vast army to protect his grave, was a despot whose tyrannical rule was self-centred and absolute. His purges and mass book burnings saw the destruction of ancient records and the murder of Confucian scholars. Obsessed with a fear of death he squandered the country's resources searching for the elixir of eternal life and, just in case he didn't find it, ensured that a suitable mausoleum was ready where he could hang out in the after life. It took nearly 40 years to build and furnish Emperor Qin's final resting place — a project that conscripted 10 per cent of the state's population. So many peasants were forced off the land to work on Qin's tomb that food production throughout the empire was adversely affected.

ShiJi (Records of the historian) describe Qin's burial tomb in great detail but strangely makes no reference to the clay warriors deployed to guard it — suggesting that Qin may have taken steps to erase their existence from human memory. According to ShiJi his mausoleum was a vast underground palace where eternal lamps illuminated streams of mercury representing the country's rivers and lakes, where thousands of gems studding the walls and ceilings symbolized the stars, and where cross-bows were rigged to nail anyone not authorized to enter. But despite his lifelong quest for immortality Qin died at the relatively young age of 50. According to HanShu (Book of Han) "thousands of officials were killed and thousands of craftsmen were buried alive to keep the tomb secret". But despite the secrecy, the crossbows, and the vast army of clay warriors, the tomb was plundered shortly after his death. Archaeologists sifting carefully through the remains continue to unearth Qin's after-life possessions and the mass graves of those who made them. Thousands of items, from simple jars and weapons to elaborate horse-drawn chariots of solid bronze, are displayed in the Provincial Museum — the legacy of a ruthless megalomaniac, and a tribute to the skill of the craftsmen who were sacrificed in their making.

Discovery of the Terra-cotta warriors created a sensation around the world and profoundly changed the lives of Yang and his fellow villagers. Mr. Yang is now 75 years old, a peasant-farmer turned local celebrity who hangs out in the vast museum that has sprung up over the spot where he was digging his well. On the day of our visit he was signing books. Using a broad felt pen he added his mark to our copy of "The Qin Dynasty Terra-Cotta Army of Dreams." I don't know whether he can read, or whether he is fully aware of the impact his discovery has made on Shaanxi and indeed on China. Along with the Forbidden City and the Great Wall the Terra-cotta army is now one of the most visited tourist destinations in the country, attracting more than two million visitors annually.