Qin Shi Huang Di Extends Reign to Minnesota

Fall                                                                      Fallowturn Moon

Qin Shi Huang Di.  Quite a guy.  As Kate pointed out, starting your tomb when you’re 13, the age Ying Zeng assumed the throne of Qin, is precocious.  He reigned 35 years and as his achievement grew, so did his ambition for his tomb and tomb complex.  All of this he did in spite of a life-long obsession with immortality, since he wanted to be not only the first Qin Shi Huang Di, that is the emperor of Qin, ruling as the sage kings of deep antiquity, but he also wanted to be the last Qin Shi Huang Di.  He wanted to rule forever.

He didn’t.

The last four days I’ve had a barrage of education about the state of Qin; its rise in the Spring and Autumn period; it’s emergence as a dominant state during the Warring States Period; and, its eventual absorption of the other 6 of the warring states to create the first unified Chinese state.

On Thursday Yang Liu gave the continuing education lecture for the exhibition.  On Friday I attended the morning 2 hour + walk through of the show in which Liu went with us from gallery to gallery explaining his intentions and giving us additional background on all the objects.  Yesterday and today was the Qin symposium with, what I learned from some sojourning Chinese students from Princeton, were the world’s authorities on all matters Qin and earlier.

I’m gonna let all that settle over the next couple of days while I work on Latin, my mythology course and revising Missing.  Oh, cooking leeks and using our carrots, too.