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Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Terracotta Army?
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hey, there are old drinking friends here. Bye! No, we've never seen each other.
No? Well, who are you then?
We're new friends. Oh, I see. Well, where are you from? Well, from S-Market, of course. Life is food. S-Market.
Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster and former chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories.
Chapter 2: Who was the first emperor of China and what did he achieve?
And today we are off to ancient China to dig deep into one of the most astonishing archaeological discoveries of all time. The first emperor of China's tomb guarded by his famous terracotta warriors. And to help me do that, I am joined by two very special guests.
In History Corner, she's Professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, and specialises in the relationship between culture and modern Chinese nation-building. She's written countless academic publications and several books, including two prize-winning books on the Opium War and Maoism. It's the fantastic Professor Julia Lovell. Welcome, Julia.
Thrilled to have you here.
It's great to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.
And in Comedy Corner, not only has he previously bossed it on Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo and Have I Got News For You, but he's got a hilarious stand-up special on Netflix.
It's Filly Filly Wang Wang. Welcome back, Phil. Hi, great thanks for having me back. Yes, don't forget the last Wang.
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Chapter 3: How was the Terracotta Army discovered?
It is very important. I'm so happy to be back on You're Dead To Me.
And last time out, we talked a bit about your education at the Malaysian school system. You hadn't done that much global history, but I'm curious as to whether the first emperor of China, the Terracotta Warriors, may be something you do know about?
Only sort of culturally speaking, because my father's Chinese Malaysian. And so there is an awareness of China and Chinese histories as sort of a kind of motherland. But we still don't know the history all that well, actually.
So what Chinese Malaysians know about Chinese history is usually what they pick up in the period dramas, the Chinese period dramas, of which there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. They're always besieging a fortress. And there's so many of those shows. And they're very popular in Malaysia. But aside from that, no, I don't really know very much. So what do you know?
This is the So What Do You Know, where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, knows about our subject.
And while the terracotta warriors have a pretty good name recognition, I think, but in terms of pop culture, if you're a Terry Pratchett fan, you may remember that in one of his Discworld novels, the protagonist Rincewind not only discovers a terracotta army in an imperial tomb, but also uses some VR technology to go and control it, which is very nifty.
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Chapter 4: What is the size and scope of the mausoleum complex?
Less nifty would be the Hollywood representation of the first emperor in the film The Mummy, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which is, frankly, a bit dodgy. But the big question, of course, is who made the terracotta warriors and when and why and how and who found them? Well, let's find out, shall we?
Julia, when we're talking about the terracotta army, we're talking about elements of the funeral complex belonging to Qin Shi Huangdi, who's the first emperor of China. Who's this guy? How far ago are we talking?
Well, the first emperor of China was born Yingzheng in 259 BCE in the kingdom of Qin in what is now Gansu and Shanxi provinces. The northern half of what's now China was divided between a number of smaller states which fought each other for control of land and resources. Now, by 259 BC, there were only seven of those states left on the field, of which Qin was the largest and the most successful.
And it's thought that over the next 40 years, Qin wins out because it has the most thorough, the most controlling and ruthless state apparatus. And Ying Zheng succeeded to this throne in 246 BCE at the age of only 13. By the time he was 38, he'd conquered each of the other states and unified them for the first time into a single empire in 221 BCE.
And at that point, he took the name Qin Shi Huang Di, or Great August, First Emperor of Qin, as goes the literal translation.
At 13, he comes to the throne.
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Chapter 5: What materials and techniques were used to create the Terracotta Warriors?
By 38, he's conquered all of China. It's quite an achievement. I mean, I'm 39 and I feel like I've maybe not done anything with my life.
Yeah. What kingdoms have you unified, Greg? I've been meaning to ask you this. It's interesting hearing Zheng Shi Huang Di because that name suddenly reignited all these memories of my father just being obsessed with Zheng Shi Huang Di for a long time.
He unifies China through constant war, then consolidates power by introducing law codes, new coinage, standardized measurements, building roads, introducing writing uniform across the country. All sensible policies. And then he also forcibly relocates 700,000 people to be forced labourers to build his pet projects. He also burns books. He murders Confucian scholars by burying them alive.
So he's quite a ruthless character. All the while doing this, he's also busy juggling another huge engineering project in China. Do you want to guess what it is, Phil?
Chapter 6: What do the burial practices reveal about ancient Chinese beliefs?
Might it be a wall?
No.
Not just any wall. A pretty good wall? A very good wall?
Is that what it's called?
The very excellent wall of China?
Something like that. It's on the tip of my tongue. Absolutely. Although it's known as the Great Wall of China. Yeah, that's one of his. So clearly we have an emperor who wants to make a big splash in life. He's building these huge monuments. He's introducing huge new policies.
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Chapter 7: How did the construction of the mausoleum impact the labor force?
But he's also really wanting a glorious death. And this funerary complex, they start planning it when he's a teenager. And it's built in Shaanxi province in... It's sort of central China, but at the time, slightly off centre, I suppose. And it ends up as being the biggest mausoleum in the history of the world. But actually, Chengqiu 1D also is planning to live forever, Julia.
How do you plan to live forever while simultaneously building your enormous tomb?
With the first emperor, you have this strange combination of huge self-confidence and paranoid frailty. So on the one hand, he proclaims himself first emperor of this unprecedentedly vast state. He is super controlling. He builds a government to micromanage ordinary people's daily lives.
But on the other, from this surprisingly young age, he seems terrified of death by human or supernatural forces. So he was desperate to find an elixir to eternal life. And he believed this might be contained in cinnabar, an ore of mercury, which he ate a good deal of. He died in 210 BCE, aged only 49, ironically, probably partly due to mercury poisoning.
Chapter 8: What lasting effects did the first emperor's reign have on Chinese history?
So the first emperor died while touring the eastern part of his empire. And his advisors initially decided to cover this up, perhaps so they could maneuver the succession to suit themselves. So they pretended that the emperor was refusing to leave his carriage and to mask the stink of his corpse, which was busily rotting while they transported it back to his mausoleum.
The Qin's former advisors filled his carriage with fish to cover up the smell.
Hmm.
You know you smell bad when people are like, we've got to cover this up. Put a load of fish on him. That'd be better.
Let's talk about the discovery of the terracotta warriors. Fragments were discovered along with some bronze arrowheads in a field by a family in 1974. And then archaeologists went, hang on a second. And so they showed up and they were astonished by the terracotta warriors because they were not expecting them at all.
Yeah, that's right. The existence of the tomb itself is described by Sima Qian, who's arguably the most famous of ancient Chinese historians, writing in about 100 BCE. But his history doesn't mention the warriors. So modern archaeologists were amazed by what these farmers found. It's arguably the most extraordinary archaeological discovery of the 20th century.
It's also fitting that the mausoleum of an emperor obsessed with living forever came out around the same time as the Bee Gees staying alive.
Do you think that's nice? Okay, so we've already heard, Phil, that the first emperor was pretty extra in his own life. How big do you think this mausoleum complex is?
People usually go by football fields, don't they? I'm going to say it's two football fields.
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