Terracotta soldiers occupy gallery

By LINDA HERRICK, arts editor

After standing sentinel in their underground site in Shaanxi province for more than 2200 years, Chinese soldiers are on a new tour of duty, through art galleries in New Zealand and Australia.

Staff at Auckland Art Gallery are carefully unpacking the precious terracotta figures, which weigh up to 250kg each, as part of a 280-item exhibition, The Two Emperors, opening there next Friday.

The soldiers, led by an imposing 197cm general, are a tiny proportion of those discovered so far at the renowned First Emperor "underground army" mausoleum pits, which were uncovered by accident near Shaanxi's Mt Li in 1974. Archaeologists have estimated that it will take at least another 200 years to uncover the contents of remaining pits and satellite tombs.

The Two Emperors brings together artefacts from China's first two dynasties, the Qin and the Han, which unified and ruled China from 221BC to AD220.

Qin - pronounced "Chin" - was the word eventually used in the English language to identify the empire as China.

The artefacts displayed in The Two Emperors are products of the ruling classes' attitudes towards the afterlife, with the First Emperor Qin Shihuang's mausoleum a near-replica of the Imperial City, built so he could continue to rule after death.

The exhibition includes terracotta archers, charioteers, a life-sized horse weighing 340kg, a weaponry, domestic tools and a pottery coffin "containing remains of exotic birds and animals".

The casket is a gruesome reminder of the Qin's early practice of sealing live animals, including horses, in the chambers.

The Han dynasty rejected that custom, and the artefacts from Emperor Jing's mausoleum in the Han section of the exhibition reflect a more moderate attitude.

The Chinese Ambassador, Chen Mingming, will open the exhibition on Thursday evening. It will continue until March 9. Late nights on February 14-16 will celebrate the Chinese New Year.