Terracotta Warriors march in to Liverpool
The hotly-anticipated new China’s First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors has opened at World Museum – and more than 140,000 tickets have already been snapped up.
Museum chiefs hope around 450,000 people will come and see the exhibition, which features a number of priceless Terracotta Warriors on loan from Xi’an, between now and the end of October.
The show, a collaboration between National Museums Liverpool, Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau and Shaanxi History Museum, tells the story of the formative years of the Chinese nation, from the pre-unification Qin kings, to China’s First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang’s rise to power and the legacy of his achievements in the succeeding Han Dynasty.
Visitors will come face to face with a number of the stunning Terracotta Warriors, including a life-size terracotta horse, as well as other objects from the Emperor’s vast burial complex. Objects from the Han Dynasty explore ancient Chinese lifestyle, the economic prosperity of the empire and beautifully crafted artefacts from royal burials.
Spanning almost 1,000 years, the exhibition sheds light on the formative years of the Chinese nation, from the bitter struggles of warring states in the 8th Century BC to the rise of the Qin State and the unification of China by the First Emperor in 221 BC, concluding with the peace and prosperity of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD).
It has been a race against time to get the exhibition ready to open to the public this week, kickstarting Liverpool’s Chinese New Year celebrations.
Guest curator Dr James Lin, from Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, said: “It’s important to have this kind of international calibre exhibition come to a northern city, otherwise it always happens in the south, particularly London.
“And Liverpool has the oldest Chinese community in Europe.”
Tickets for China’s First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors are £14.50 for adults and £5.50 for children aged five and over. More details and booking HERE