Terracotta Warriors Exhibition

The Terracotta Warriors have come to Wellington.  Or, to be more precise, this is a private collection of life sized models, replicated authentic handmade copies of  the originals.  We took out SLG friends to see them today at St James Theatre.  With nine of us, we were just short of the number needed for a group concession entry price.  Robin was sent up to the ticket office to see if we could get the cheaper price anyway.  “Get someone off the street”, was the suggestion.  So we invited the three people behind us in the queue to  join us in the ticket purchase.  Great, we now qualified for group discount.

As we entered the exhibition our tickets were checked by a  young man dressed in authentic period costume.  We admired  bronze and jade grave goods, including several beautifully carved vases.  There were several warriors on display painted in vibrant colours, as they would have looked originally.  We are so used to seeing the terracotta warriors in their dusty hues that these bright ones seemed rather garish to us.

We then went through to the main part of the exhibition to see the terracotta warriors all lined up.  As the weight of these was  more than 10, 000kg the building needed to be tested to ensure it could carry the weight.  They all looked so amazingly lifelike.   Each warrior is unique in size, shape, uniform and face.  There was an exact replica of the Emperors bronze chariot and horses,  as well as swords, crossbows and axes.

Every visitor goes into the draw to win a trip to China, so we are hoping that one of our group  will be the lucky winner.  How wonderful it would be to view the  terracotta warriors  at the place they were found in China.