Visual Arts

SANTA ANA, Calif. – More than a dozen Chinese terra cotta warriors crafted more than 2,000 years ago to protect their emperor in the afterlife have arrived in the United States with a very different mission: cultural ambassadors.

MARK AVERY/The Associated Press

Julie Lee of the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., unwraps the face of a horse as terra cotta statues are unpacked for the exhibition, 'Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor.' The 2,000- year-old life-size clay statues of warriors, archers and chariots are on loan from China.

As China gears up for the 2008 Olympics, the ancient life-size clay statues of warriors, archers and chariot drivers go on display at the Bowers Museum as the largest loan of the warriors in U.S. history.

"Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" will open today and run for five months before the warriors travel to Houston, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., during the next two years.

"This is really the start of the China we know today," Bowers president Peter Keller said of the ancient Qin Dynasty that produced the intricately crafted warriors. "If you're going to bring something to the United States during the Olympics – forgetting the politics of today – it's really pretty extraordinary."

Curators hope the show will pique the interest of Americans who are inundated with news of lead-contaminated Chinese toys, human rights violations in Tibet and rapid economic expansion – but who know nothing of the nation's ancient and storied past.

"China has changed so much over the years, but even though the warriors are very ancient their influence on today's China is very deep," said Bai Lisha, project manager of Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center in Xi'an, China. "You can discover a lot about China from looking at these warriors."

For the Chinese, the clay army represents a critical link to Qin Shi Huang, a ruler who unified China for the first time in 221 B.C. after centuries of feuding among competing states. The emperor created a central government, mobilized hundreds of thousands of workers to build the Great Wall and standardized systems for writing, weights and measures, and currency.

As powerful as he was in life, however, the tyrannical emperor was obsessed with his own immortality after surviving three attempts on his life. He conscripted thousands to build an elaborate, 23-square-mile necropolis complete with an army of an estimated 7,000 clay warriors, horsemen, horses and archers to guard him in the afterlife.

The first of these warriors were discovered in 1974 by farmers trying to dig a well near Xi'an.

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