NVQ in Pottery and Comedy Appreciation

So check this: Qin Shi Huang took the throne of the western state of Qin sometime in the BC, aged 13. He immediately set about conquering the rest of China. This took 25 years. He died at 49, in an attempt to secure immortality on an island off the mainland. But listen: right from the moment he became emperor, arrangements were made for his tomb. It's thirty five metres under, large like thousands of cubic metres, booby-trapped, full of riches and contains a large scaled model of the whole of his empire with 100 tonnes of mercury running through to represent the major rivers. Bla, bla, bla, this is not the point I want to make. Rather: once the 720,000 artisans & labourers he had pressganged into the task had finished their work, he slaughtered every last one of them. This was to protect the secrecy of his tomb. The more skiled workers (along with thousands of concubines) he buried alive. So: what I would like from you, dear readers, is concrete examples of violent civilisations. Facts and figures will bolster your credibility. I'd like to know if there are for which human life was less valuable.

You see, we been touring towns of dust, banks and modern buildings, and stay astounded at the lack of old. That is, for all this history, there's little sign of it out there; and it seems that every time a new emperor rode into town, he razed it to the ground and started from scratch (right up until Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 60's).

So come on: stump up your e.g.s.

And on to the good stuff: how to choose a tour guide. Yesterday, whilst touring this religious stuff, our novice tour guide (we were her first real tourists) had to ask Tommy to stop laughing. And today, he took a new line: we were stopped by a tall, English speaking Chinaman (two rare qualities, even rarer in combination) on the long walk from the bus to these pottery warriors and asked if we wouldn't like a guide. "Only if you follow me!" shouted Tommy, breaking his way off the path and disappearing into the undergrowth. The tall Chinaman stayed put.

This is the guide we eventually chose. She is now under the impression we are Bill Clinton's children (and she doesn't come to work on horseback, though she would consider it).

ttfn,

Marky


Today, Tommy and I visited the Terracotta Warriors just outside Xi'an. http://www.google.com/search?hl=zh-CN&q=terracotta+warriors&lr=.