The ‘good omen' that heralded an afterlife army's arrival in Australia

Sydney Morning Herald

26-06-2025

The Shaanxi terracotta warriors guard the tomb of the Qin dynasty emperor who united China 2000 years ago, with 'one law, one coin, one script and one measure'.
Described as 'the afterlife army' of Emperor Qin Shihuang, the 8000 clay warriors stand forever to attention in a celestial military camp unearthed accidentally in 1974 by a farmer tilling his fields.
Ten of the clay army figures – eight warriors, a seated attendant and a saddled horse – now feature in Terracotta Warriors: Legacy of the First Emperor, a major exhibition of 225 objects loaned from Emperor Qin Shihuang Mausoleum Site Museum and from 17 other museums across China to the Western Australian Museum.
'We're told it's the largest exhibition of its kind outside China,' says museum director Alec Coles, whose team began discussions seven years ago with the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage, the Emperor Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum and other sites to collate Terracotta Warriors.
While Victoria has previously hosted a terracotta warrior show, Coles says the current objects – spanning a 1000-year period – have never previously been assembled in one place.
'Nearly three quarters of the objects have never been seen in Australia and we're told almost half have never before left China.'
All are genuine artefacts, from the terracotta warriors to bronze bells, jade dragon pendants and even pottery bath scrubbers. Only two life-size horse-drawn chariots are replicas because the real ones – painstakingly reassembled from fragments – are too fragile to tour.
A few items will have their first ever public showing, like an emperor dowager's gold ornaments that Perth visitors will see ahead of even the Chinese public. Some borrowed items are unlikely to travel again, like a dainty life-like swan loaned to Perth because it mirrors Western Australia's state emblem, the black swan.
'We've had a lot of license to ask for material ... I think the enduring relationship between WA and China has played a part, particularly because of the resources industry.'
WA Museum director Alec Coles
'We were desperate to get it because when the Chinese delegation came over, they were intrigued by our black swans,' says Coles.
'We took them to Perth Zoo to get an idea of Australian wildlife, and it was funny to see a black swan following us around the whole time. I think it was a good omen.'
The swan is among priceless bronze-cast waterfowl – 20 swans, 20 geese and six cranes – that were unearthed in the early 2000s with their terracotta animal handlers, whose 'serene faces and delicate hands' identify them as bird keepers.
Exhibition curator Tonia Eckfeld, a Chinese art history professor from Melbourne University, has witnessed the 'birth' of Shaanxi province's extraordinary archaeological finds.
'I've seen the objects coming out of the earth, including objects that are in this exhibition. I was doing my doctoral work in China in the 1990s when they were excavating pits of stone armour and lifting them out, 80 suits of them,' Eckfeld says.
'They had all been on wooden racks which decayed. You can imagine dealing with 600 stone pieces per suit of armour, once linked by silk thread or metal wire. So the archaeologists put stickers on each piece, with numbers, one, two, three, took them out and reassembled them.'
She says the best clues to reassembling the armour – one of which is displayed in Perth – came directly from the warrior figures.
'They bore many different configurations of armour, and so the experts were able to put the 80 suits back together.' A single magnificent suit of armour was for a horse; 'we presume it was for the horse of the emperor himself.'
The Terracotta Warriors are only one aspect of the exhibition narrative, often captured in immersive audio-visual screens – how X-rays of the bronze waterfowl revealed that China had learned from Western casting techniques.
Clues to ancient global animal trade, a warmer climate and denuded bamboo forests lie in relics of live animals that were buried in grand tombs – like ill-fated Asian tapirs, African ground hornbills and once abundant, over-grazing giant pandas.
'These objects all live in the present day,' says Eckfeld.
'They're not just old things from the past. They're very culturally alive, but they also do have a place in the present. They're part of all of our lives.'
The inner core of Emperor Qin Shihuang's tomb has never been excavated. Does Eckfeld look forward to learning its secrets?
'I'm sure that it will be excavated one day. But at the moment, I guess the fact is there's just so much else to do. Inside the core there's likely to be the most precious material – that could mean very delicate silk textiles, brocades and things like that. So you need to be ready to deal with it when it comes out.
'Preservation comes before everything, because a top priority in China is to look after the material heritage. I've watched their conservation and material science develop in the decades that I've been working there – it's cutting edge now.'
Coles says Terracotta Warriors will have an unusually long run in Perth, until Chinese New Year in February 2026.
'We've sold more advanced tickets probably by a factor of five or six than any other exhibition we've ever done. We know people are buying tickets from the east coast and from overseas to come here,' he says.
'We've had a lot of license to ask for material, to select material, and the authorities have been very accommodating. I think the enduring relationship between WA and China has played a part, particularly because of the resources industry. We know that China is by far our biggest trading partner, three times the US for instance.
'Soft diplomatic relations are really important in order to work together, and the number of items and long loan time are a reflection of the bond of trust we built up with our Chinese partners.'