How an Emperor’s search for immortality brought tourism to Xi’an

XI’AN, China:

When one speaks about Shaanxi Province in Northwest China today, nobody identifies it with the runaway 9 percent progress of modern China even in the teeth of the oil crisis.

China’s breakneck drive to industrialization may gobble up over 8 percent of scarce oil and fossil fuels, but Shaanxi (Shensi) gobbles up much of China’s history – a fact unnoted by headline writers.

Here it all began. Xi’an is a city nestled in a rich plain to the south of the River Weihe and north of the Qinling Mountains. The central Shaanxi plain has been inhabited by "Chinese" since the Stone Age. In 1953, archaeological diggers discovered the shards of a civilization 6,000 years old in the village of Banpo on the eastern outskirts of Xi’an. The excavation revealed the remains of 45 houses, six pottery kilns, plus 250 graves. Spadework unearthed working instruments, household utensils, mostly made of stone.

There were knives, spinning wheels, axes, shovels, chisels, arrowheads and even millstones. Awls, needles, fishing hooks were found fashioned of bone. Imagine a "city" inhabited for six millenniums.

Xi’an City, even if it were not so ancient comes as a surprise – a pleasant surprise.

You expect to come upon a quaint but backward "museum" village teeming only with postcard vendors, souvenir stalls, tourist guides, touts, and the usual assortment of beggars kowtowing with their forehead furrowed by banging the pavement.

By golly, as your Boeing B-737-300 lands on a smooth tarmac, you step off into a huge chrome-plated terminal, glitzy, marble floored, humming with escalators, streamlined in every way (including automatic "don’t touch" faucets. Brought in by Hainan Airlines as our group was, or by sleek Boeing B-777s and B-747s of China Southern (the airline we took from Manila), millions of visitors stream in annually into this sprawling, clean and up-to-date airport which makes our tatty NAIA-1 and NAIA "Centennial II" terminals look like provincial aerodromes.

Motoring into this city of seven million provides a second shock of surprise. Xi’an is modern. Its City Wall, erected in 1374 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) stands 12 meters high and runs 13.7 kilometers. It was built on the even earlier foundations of a city wall put up by the Tang Dynasty in AD 618-907. After more than 600 years of everyday use, however, residents complain, visible cracks have at long last begun to appear in portions of the wall. I wish our Department of Public Works and Highways had such a record of longevity in its works, where cracks appear within six months!

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Xi’an – whose name means "Western Peace" – used to be the very ancient city of Chang-an ("Everlasting Peace") – probably in the perspective of history China’s most important city. When you see the wide tree-lined boulevards, each one of them putting our potholed, dingy, treeless EDSA (the Main Street of our nation) to shame, the flashy shopping malls, the impressive hotel facades lined with luxury brand magazins as in the Parisian model, featuring Rolex, Tudor, Blancpain, Audemars Piguet, Prada, Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton, Etam, Morgan – you name it – you experience culture shock. Here is Kentucky Friend Chicken with Colonel Saunders leering at one and winking behind huge neon lights. A two-storey MacDonalds dominates the main drag. Carrefour of France occupies an entire building for its supermarket and department store. An immense "BUDWEISER" beer billboard blazes with neon in the distance. Double-decker buses, yellow-cream colored but London-style ply the avenues. Late model cars and SUVs zip by. Motorcycles, motorbikes – and a very few bicycles. Convenience stores 24-hour 7-Eleven style but named Sea-something are ubiquitous. Restaurants are full of happy eaters till the midnight hour – and this on a weekday.

People can be seen dancing in the park to the beat of disco music, or even in the sedate waltz. Xi’an is a wide-open city that seems, like the old New York used to be – a city that never sleeps. But beware of rash conclusions. China is the homeland of the worker ants. They’ll be back at work when the factory whistle blows tomorrow – or on the farm.

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What attracted prosperity to Xi’an – formerly Chang-an – was the digging of a well.

Chang-an, on its own, deserves its unique niche in the annals of mankind. From the eleventh century A.D. it was the capital of eleven dynasties – the Western Zhou, the Qin (Chin), the Western Han, the Sui, and the Tang.

In the eighth century, when Chang-an was the capital of the Tang Dynasty, it was probably – with a population of one million – the biggest city on earth! From here, a center of learning, thousands of students from Japan brought Buddhism (itself imported by the monks from India) to China. They also brought home to Nippon the system of writing, the Chinese ideograms, they call kanji.

All the relics, pagodas, the belfry and bell tower (dating back to the 14th century Ming Dynasty) are far eclipsed by the discovery in 1974, east of the city of Xi’an, of the vast burial hill concealing the tomb of China’s greatest and most notorious Emperor, Qin (Chin) Shihuang, the founder of a Chin (Qin) dynasty that lasted only a few years but transformed China – unified it by the sword, and solidified it by cruelty and cunning.

If the Pharaohs of Egypt had their pyramids with their secrets, Emperor Shih Huang Di had his ghostly army of clay figures, fired in kilns, holding weapons still usable in war. Members of the Yun Zhai Commune digging a series of wells to find water for their fields came upon artifacts, then, exploring deeper discovered a life-sized pottery figure of a warrior buried upright in the earth, some 16 feet underground.

Eager scientists and archaeologists rushing to the scene uncovered more – finally bringing back into the light after two millenniums underground old Shihuangdi’s army set in battle array. The soldiers and their generals were there in full armor, their faces both ferocious and sad, no two countenances alike. There were swordsmen, spearmen, archers and bowmen, cavalry with chariots and horses, in orderly rows to defend the sleeping Emperor.

The 8,000 figures uncovered and pieced together thus far are only the beginning. Pits 2 and 3 probably contain many more, and the Emperor’s mausoleum has still to be explored! The army marching out of the mists and mud is a fitting Praetorian guard to the Emperor who the chronicles say "fought millions with thousands of war chariots" and imparted his name – CHIN (QIN) – to China.

Shihuang was not a charming ruler.

Born the son of King ZhuangXiang, the King of Qin, in the first month of the lunar year in 259 BC, he was first named Zhao Zheng. His name was subsequently changed to Ying Zheng. His mother had been the beautiful concubine of Lu Buwei, a merchant whom the King met when he was being held hostage in the nearby kingdom of Zhao, before escaping and assuming the throne. In 247 BC, when Ying Zheng (Shihuang) was only 13, his father died. But merchant Lu Buwei took over as regent to dominate the young teenage king and handled the affairs of state with his mother, the Queen.

At age 22, Ying Zheng had had enough. He firmly took over the reigns of government. He put down a rebellion led by a servant Lao Ai who had become intimate with his mischievous mother, the Queen.

He sent Lu Buwei off into exile, to Sichuan, where the fellow later committed suicide.

Then the King launched a campaign to conquer all the six adjoining states. In 221 BC, after many battles, he had absorbed the states of Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao and Wei. He divided his new kingdom into 36 prefectures which he ruled with an iron hand.

He standardized the systems of weights and measures, reduced handwriting into small Seal Script and even standardized the width of carriages axles to six feet. His measures centralized politics, the economy, military affairs, and culture. He brooked no dissenting ideology.

The eccentric Shihuang came to believe that men should not think or discuss too much, otherwise they would begin to think about and plot revolution. He sent out his men to destroy all ancient records they could find, especially the analects and books of the philosopher Confucius. He once herded over 400 Confucian scholars to the Wei River and had them beheaded or drowned. He buried another 700 scholars alive at the foot of Mount Li.

He built an Imperial Road like the Romans did. He erected the Great Wall of China. A builder and destroyer. Need more be said?