Terracotta and Mrs Thatcher

TERRACOTTA: My last visit in China, before returning to Beijing, was to Xian, site of the famous terracotta warriors. They were created over 2000 years ago for the tomb of Shi Huang Ti, who unified China and built the Great Wall.

Courtesy of Goolbai Gunasekara, whose 'Historic Buildings' should be made readily available for all students interested in the outside world, I knew much about him, and the strategies he adopted to maintain control.

Many of them would make sense also in the modern world, if applied tactfully, for instance land redistribution to win over the peasants, or getting local leaders to live at the capital to reduce regional separatism.

What I did not know about was the scale of his funeral arrangements. The site has to be seen to be comprehended, and even then perhaps we miss much of what he did. The three pits that form the museum are a couple of miles from the tomb itself, and it is likely that much more still lies buried.

The main pit, discovered in 1974 by a farmer digging a well, contained 6000 warriors. Many of them have been restored and stand now in the formal positions in which they were ready to defend their emperor's remains. They are all individualized.

My guide pointed out to me one who was painfully thin, and another she described as the most handsome in the whole tomb, with whom she had once had her photograph taken.

The second pit which is still in shambles has about a thousand warriors, but the gallery around it has beautifully restored examples of all the types to be found, standing and sitting archers, cavalrymen, official and general.

Rank can be identified by hairstyle and, fascinatingly, the size of the stomach. The third pit seems to have been the headquarters of the army, and has been restored to allow some understanding of its structure.

The whole complex is full of horses, short, smart beasts as opposed I was told to the later longer-legged Mongolian variety. They stand in groups of four, the chariots they were drawing long rotted, since they alone were made of wood in the midst of the terracotta army.

However, in a special showcase museum are displayed, still harnessed to teams of horses, two bronze chariots unearthed from nearer the tomb, exquisitely cast, one bearing a multipurpose umbrella that could be used as a weapon as well as a seat.

The complex was full of tourists, most of them American, one from South Dakota where I gather there is also some sort of excavation which the patriotic creature seemed to think comparable with this one.

Another, evidently Chinese in origin, marvelled at the thought that these pits had been created before the time of Christ.

A third was explaining to his wife that this had been a Commuunist China, while Taiwan had been Free China, terminology I had thought long forgotten, inappropriate as it had in any case been in the authoritarian days of Chiang Kai Shek.

So much water has flowed under so many bridges since those days of dichotomies. I remember having been in Hong Kong in 1984 when the Queen visited, accompanied by 400 British businessmen who accompanied her upriver into China, which made me realise why Hong Kong was being returned so expeditiously.

Margaret Thatcher had been in China previously to commence negotiations, and had asked to visit Xian and see the terracotta warriors. All her wishes had been met, except for obtaining the autograph of the farmer who had discovered the warriors.

He now sat formally in the first hall of the complex, where a wonderfully evocative multi-dimensional film was shown, signing copies of the beautifully illustrated record of his achievements.

A quarter of a century ago, it seemed, he could neither read nor write, which is why Mrs Thatcher had to go away disappointed, her hosts ashamed to explain the reason for their refusal.

The minute she left he was given an intensive course with one of China's best teachers, which has led to his current occupation. I could however understand why, bespectacled now, he seemed so grumpy when introduced as a celebrity to gawping visitors.

Xian, drawing so many tourists a year, with a wonderful museum in town and tarted up city walls, is also being developed as a centre of education as well as industry.

The Chinese government has sensibly realised the need to reduce regional disparities and Xian, site of the capital of so many dynasties in the first millennium, is an obvious target for expansion. 66 universities - all of them it should be noted fee-levying - make clear the importance attached to human resources as well as infrastructural.

Shi Huang Ti, it should be noted, disliked scholars, though that may have been because he saw Confucianism as inimical to his own absolutist outlook. Given his standardisation of currency and language, I suspect he would have been able to move with the times whenever he functioned.

The developments around his tomb, and the city he elevated to be the capital of the Middle Kingdom, would I think be propitiation enough for his disturbed shade.