Terracotta Warriors, Downunder!

 

Perth, Australia

Nov. 14

So we took the metro to town, with a plan to go see King’s Park. We walked by the WA Museum downtown and saw a sign for the Terracotta Warriors. I thought… what? In Perth? 

We had to go in and see what that was about. It turns out that they have a display with pieces on loan of the Terracotta Warriors from Xi’an, China. 

We didn’t know about this til we walked by. I was only mildly on the museum otherwise.

We were hungry so we went across the street and had pizza at Palace Arcade. They have retro arcade games, so retro that they have “Pong.” That’s right; that’s like the first ever video game, certainly the first one I played. We didn’t take time to play any games, because we wanted to get back to the museum, as it was already 1:00 PM.

TERRACOTTA WARRIORS

This is a great special collection they have and it covers a lot of history of the area, especially Qin Shi Huang (Qin is pronounced “chin”), who conquered all of China and became the first Emperor in 221 BC.

Spring and Autumn Period: 770 - 476 BCE

During this period, 100 small states and kingdoms vied for power. During this time, the Qin started as a feudal state but gradually rose to power over 500 years. 

The Warring States: 476 - 221 BCE

By warfare the number of states were reduced to seven. 

The first emperor of China was Qin Shi Huang (Qin Shi Huangdi). He unified the country in 221 BC after conquering the other six warring states and founded the Qin dynasty. 

Qin tore down the walls around the competing kingdoms once he’d conquered them, and built the Great Wall of China.

He is also known for major projects like standardizing Chinese writing and currency, and creating a unified system of weights and measures.

 

The eighth wonder of the world, the Terracotta Warriors, was another ambitious project of Qin Shi Huangdi. They would guard his tomb. 

Also Qin built a system of road, including the “Straight Road” which was a 500 mile road for the military to get to the north quickly, if they were invaded. 

He had thought that such a great road would protect his legacy for 10,000 years, but all the work and resources to build these things put a lot of demand on the populace. Also, his harsh laws and system of justice caused unrest.

Qin Shi Huangdi died in 210 BC; he was succeeded by his son.

In 209 BC a rebellion broke out, but failed. But within 3 years the empire began to fall apart because of other rebellions that began to spread. 

Khevron rightly guessed that the origin of the European word “Chinese” went back to the name of the first Emperor Qin.

The Han dynasty was born out of a revolt against the harsh rule of the Qin Dynasty.

But they were more considerate of the populace, and made less demands. Their terracotta figurines were only 1/3 real size.

The Han Dynasty lasted 400 years. 

After the museum, I got a Terracotta Warrior bookmark and Khevron got two Chinese coin replicas. 

SUNSET AT THE PARK

Now it was late afternoon and we headed for King’s Park. The first place I wanted to go was Jacob’s Ladder, because it had a great view.

The way we approached it, we started at the top of Jacob’s Ladder, got some great shots of the city. Then went down the stairway (ladder). We walked what seemed a long way, over a foot bridge, and over another bridge and got to a place to get a good shot of the sunset, right there on the ocean.

By now we’d given up on the rest of the park, so we headed back to a restaurant we saw at the bottom of Jacob’s Ladder, but it was closed. So we took a metro all the way out to Westfield Carousel Mall only to find out it had closed at 5:30. So, we had dinner at Guzman Y Gomez. Then headed home.