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Feastful offer for visitors to Terracotta Warriors

By Lin Shujuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-10 08:39

Buy one get one free. Visitors to the Terracotta Warriors Museum in the capital of Shaanxi province can from the end of next year use their tickets to partake of the beauty of a theme park being built near the mausoleum site of China's first emperor Qinshihuang.

"Work on the relic site park of Qinshihuang's Mausoleum is progressing well and is expected to be completed by the end of 2010," said Wu Yongqi, curator of the Museum of Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qinshihuang.

On Saturday, the museum in Lintong county, 35 km from downtown Xi'an, will celebrate the 35th anniversary of the discovery of the terracotta army.

Discovered in 1974 by some farmers digging a well, the terracotta army has brought the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang - the founder of China's first feudal ruler of Qin Dynasty (221 BC-207 BC) - and his entourage after death to the world's attention.

A visitor talks on her phone as she walks past a row of soldiers in the Terracotta Army Museum in Xi'an, capital of Shannxi province, recently. A theme park of China's First Emperor Qinshihuang is being built near the Museum and is expected to open at the end of next year. [China Daily]

The museum has received about 60 million visitors, including at least 6 million from abroad since opening to the public in 1979.

One mile to its west is the giant tomb mound of the emperor. The 80-m-high earth pyramid stands on top of a burial chamber. For more than 2,000 years, people knew that the mound housed the tomb of the First Emperor but none had any idea of its real scale.

In 2002, researchers confirmed that it was only the centerpiece of a giant necropolis. The mausoleum is built like a well-structured city with a huge underground palace at the center. Surrounding the palace is an inner city, beyond which is an outer city. The 2,200-year-old mausoleum is spread over 2.13 sq km.

The terracotta warriors, believed to be modeled after the emperor's real soldiers, were placed outside the outer city as gatekeepers of one of the biggest tombs ever made.

After the discovery of the terracotta warriors, the government ordered a series of further diggings. In all, 600 pits were discovered over 56.25 sq km.

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"But," Wu said, "the overall plan of the cemetery remains a mystery."

In 2005, the government decided to transform the central part of the mausoleum site into a theme park, and spent 900 million yuan ($130 million) to relocate about 6,000 residents and 24 enterprises to clear the area.

Trees are being planted, and roads paved to make the park as attractive and accessible as possible, Wu said.

Further research using remote sensing and geophysical exploration technologies will continue on the mausoleum site, he said.

"But there's no plan to excavate the mausoleum in the foreseeable future, even though we are eager to know what is lying beneath," Wu said.