Usually by this date in the year I am somewhere else. 2015, for example — halfway up Kilimanjaro. Last year — Whitehaven. (OK, not so exotic, but still, on holiday.) There are other examples. This year, I’m still working, at least for another few days. But walking through Chinatown on my way to work each day at least allows for some globetrotting by proxy.
I once started digging over a neglected patch of weeds in our allotment and a few weeks later was still going, pulling out all sorts of junk including an old oil drum and substantial remnants of what, thirty years before, had probably been a greenhouse. It was a pain in the arse, but nevertheless I did wonder what I was going to find, so it had a strange fascination to it. A dead body, I was expecting at one point.
Imagine then the feelings of the guys who in 1974 started digging a well a few miles from Xi’an, in China, and uncovered the first inklings of the massive army of thousands of life-size clay figures that we now call the Terracotta Warriors. Forty-four years later, they’re still digging and still pulling them out. Seven of the figures are currently off on a world tour, and presently displayed in an exhibition in the World Museum, Liverpool. It’s their individuality that impresses — and yet, it was probably easier for the makers to construct them all different rather than all the same, as each was made individually, not mass-produced in a mold. They don’t do much, of course — but they were worth seeing. At least, it gives you an insight into just how megalomaniac were ancient rulers like Emperor Qin.
Being 42 