Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
2,200 years ago, Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi conquered and unified six adjoining kingdoms to form what we know today as China, started work on what would become the Great Wall, and committed an incredible amount of resources to the construction of his final resting place. The tomb would include everything he’d require in the afterlife, from generals and soldiers and horses and chariots, to acrobats for entertaining and servants for, well, serving, all fashioned from terracotta. At over sixty square kilometers – about the size of Manhattan – the burial site would surround the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, and be constructed beneath a pyramid-like tomb mound.
After Qin Shi Huangdi’s death in 210 BCE, this vast, incredibly detailed resting place disappeared from the historical record until 1974, when farmers in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province discovered evidence of the tomb while digging a well. And that’s when archaeologist Yuan Zhongyi was brought in to investigate. Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors bounces contemporary interviews with Yuan off reenactments of his initial excavations at the site, and also features archival footage of the discovery; in addition, experts like Qin historian Dr. Hui Ming Tak Ted, archaeologist Dr. Xiuzhen Janice Li, excavation leader Zhu Sihong, and senior restorer Lan Desheng provide context on the historic find and their continuing work to catalog the site.
As Jin Lusi’s narration describes, the emperor tapped a convict workforce 700,000 strong to complete his mausoleum. Free labor gets things done, and reenactments portray the low-tech, high-output methods that were used. But Mysteries also explores the political machinations at work in the ancient past, when a messy line of succession threatened to destroy everything the emperor had built. Today, the terracotta warriors stand faithfully in the tomb. But as Dr. Xiuzhen notes, the warriors were not discovered fully intact. The entire site encountered manmade violence in the form of destructive fire and vindictive, purposeful physical destruction. With careful, observant work in the restoration unit, the warriors are being rebuilt piece by piece over a period of years.
Historical reenactments can be a difficult feature of a documentary, where scope and budget can reveal limitations in the format. But the reenactment component of Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors is effective, because the doc doesn’t lose sight of their value. Principally, we’re able to put faces to the names that populate a primary source like Shiji, the ancient written history of China. Men like Hu Hai, the youngest prince in the first emperor’s brood, and Zhao Gao, a royal eunuch who, as it turns out, was also a shameless and power-hungry troublemaker. Figure in a rousing battle sequence that, while not on the scale of a dramatic Chinese historical epic, does illustrate the weapons and tactics at work in the Qin Dynasty, and the reenactments in Mysteries become one of its more compelling features.
This does not diminish the contributions of contemporary experts. Mysteries draws an interesting visual parallel between the craftsmen depicted in the reenactments – artisans of terracotta, pigments, and ochre, enlisted from throughout the realm – and the careful work of technicians in the present, as they take professional pains to restore that work from so many thousands of years ago. And what is apparent from the archeological and forensic experts interviewed is how much they value the burial site, not only for what it can reveal about history, but because of its specific links to China’s contemporary view of itself.
