Samhain Fallowturn Moon
Introduction to a tour of the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit:
In the 2002 movie, Hero, directed by Yimou Zhang, Sky, an assassin from the state of Zhao confronted Qin Shi Huang Di in sword play; yet, when the decisive moment came, sheathed his sword and fled. Later, he tries to dissuade Nameless, played by Jet Li, who has trained 10 years to assassinate Qin Shi Huang.
“Why,” Nameless asks, “Do you try to stop me?”
“Two words,” says Sky.
He writes two characters in the sand of the desert with his sword.
When Nameless, too, lets Qin Shi Huang Di live; the king of Qin, soon to become the first emperor, asks him, ‘What were the two words?”
“Our land.”
Hero continues an ongoing campaign, begun under Mao’s leadership, to rehabilitate the image of Qin Shi Huang Di, whose early representations in Chinese history, especially in the Records of The Grand Historian, written by Han historian Sima Qian, were of a cruel, heartless ruler.
Now, we see Qin Shi Huang Di compared to George Washington as the father of his country. The bit from Hero supports this view.
The terra cotta figures themselves, unique and special as they are artistically, have the primary function now of pointing to the achievements of Qin Shi Huang Di and, by extension, to the story of the Qin state, a story that begins in 771 b.c. with the Zhou dynasty, once secure in the areas inhabited by the early Qin, fleeing to the east as nomads, barbarians from the steppes and grasslands invade.
A Qin armed escort saw the fleeing royals of the Zhou dynasty safely to their new capital, now well to the east. In gratitude the Zhou gave the Qin leadership a title approximating Duke with a large land grant which became both the Qin state and the western border of Zhou dynasty. The Qin had had land out there on the frontier previously, but this they held not as rulers, but as horse breeders, a skill for which they were prized.
The 771 bc invasion breaks the Zhou dynasty’s reign, begun in 1100 bc, into an Eastern Zhou realm, nominally controlled by the Zhou kings, and a Western realm, now under the control of warlords like the Duke of Qin. Thus begins the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, running from 770 bc to 476 bc. During this time there were numerous small states, perhaps as many as 200, each with a king or a duke. This period ends with the inevitable consolidation of these states into 7 larger ones: Qin, Zhao, Qi, Chu, Han, Wei and Yan.
Just before the end of the Spring and Autumn Period comes China’s 100 schools of thought. In this era Chinese intellectuals tried to limn a a way out of the awful, ongoing violence. In this period Confucius, Lao Tze, the Mohists and the Legalists among many others present different models for a peaceful state. Confucius suggests a harmonious state based on harmonious relations: ruler to people, husband to wife, father to son, older brother to younger brother, friend to friend. He also developed rituals to bind the whole together. Lao Tze, the Taoist school, sought to retire from action, to live with the flow of events and the natural world. The Mohists spoke of unconditional love and actively tried to intercede in violent confrontations. The Legalists, like Qin Shi Huang Di’s advisor Han Fei, believed in strong, clear laws applied equally to all and in harsh, certain punishment when the laws were broken.
This was, globally, the Axial age, the time of the Buddha, the Hebrew Prophets, Upanishads, Lao Tzu, Homer, Socrates, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Thucydides, Archimedes, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah as well as Socrates, Confucius and Zoroaster.
The 100 schools did not end the violence. Mutual warfare continues from 476 bc to 221 bc, the Warring States period in Chinese history. The Warring States Period ends when Qin defeats and absorbs the last of the seven. This is Qin Shi Huang Di’s most visible accomplishment, the unification of China, and the one for which he earns the designation, the George Washington of China.
It is not, however, his most important accomplishment. His dynasty lasts only 14 years, followed by the rise of another of the Warring States, the Han. His most lasting legacy lies in the centralization of rule and his rejection of the old method of allowing warlords to become kings, which lead to the Spring and Autumn period. Qin Shi Huang Di standardized currency, chariot axle-widths, script, weights and measures and he tried to standardize the interpretation of the past.
It was, however, his creation of a court supported by highly trained officials and ruling directly through appointed positions that became the Chinese model for governance, a model still in place today.