FALLING UNDER THE SPELL OF EMPEROR QIN’S CERAMIC GUARD

We had endured a bad night, arriving late on a delayed flight from Peking at the dingy, Russian-built People’s Hotel and finding it populated with far more cockroaches than people. The crusty little critters marched up the walls in platoons, fanned out on the ceilings, raised their kids on the bathroom floors and lolled around in the bed linens.

Fastidious Americans, we had launched an all-out attack, whacking the bugs with plastic slippers provided by the hotel, scaling sturdy chests of drawers to reach the highest climbers and sharing a single can of Raid proffered by a knowing traveler.

Finally admitting defeat, we had joined the roaches in bed, though most of us slept in our clothes and curled up in tense little balls, vainly hoping that we might shrivel into smaller targets.

A gray morning eventually dawned and with it the news that liquor was a more effective bug killer than human violence. Several dead roaches were floating in my unfinished glass of sherry, provided the preceding night by gracious neighbors.

“Take that, you creeps,” I hissed at the corpses as I prepared for a journey that had brought me 9,000 miles from Los Angeles. On that long-awaited day, our bus driver--whose persistent horn-honking could qualify him for an American wedding motorcade--would take us another 21 miles to the 2,200-year-old, life-size terra-cotta army of China’s first emperor. Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BC) directed the creation and interment of this ceramic imperial guard, which was only discovered in 1974.

On the way to the astonishing archeological dig, we would drive through such a fascinating slice of life in China that the night of the roaches would be forgotten. It was Sunday, country market day, and rural residents had brought their wares to the sides of the narrow road. They had live pigs stuffed under their arms, goats on leashes and towering bicycle loads of everything from onions and greens to baskets, toilet bowls and huge pieces of furniture.

“Free enterprise,” declared our Chinese guide, who also insisted that the dogs and cats being sold would be kept as pets, not eaten.

Beyond the roadside spectacle, we saw women doing their laundry in a river and a constant parade of construction--brick houses rising, mortar sand being thrown against screens to sift out rocks. Industry, thy name is China. Curiosity, thy name is America. More blurry photographs were shot from the windows of that bus than in the Forbidden City.

As we walked from the bus to the site of the long-buried army, children clamored around, beseeching us to buy crude clay replicas of the soldiers at slippery prices--all under a dollar. More orderly salespeople peddled larger warriors with slightly bigger price tags from rows of tables. This sea of souvenir hawkers, so uncharacteristic of China, was our first inkling of what the 1974 discovery of the ancient ceramic army had done to this once-quiet countryside in Lintong County.

Inside the museum grounds, we were ushered into a large room and given historical background on the archeological wonder. Farmers discovered the pit of 6,000 soldiers while drilling for water. Two smaller pits of life-size figures were found two years later, and in 1980 came the stunning discovery of a pair of four-horse chariots and drivers, exquisitely crafted in bronze at about a quarter of life-size. All these finds were strategically located near Qin’s tomb, which is in a mound awaiting excavation.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang, a ruthless strategist and brilliant administrator, was the first to bring the feudal empire of China under one ruler, and his list of accomplishments is staggering. Along with unifying the government, he standardized law, weights, measures, currency, written language and even the axle length of ancient vehicles. He built a network of tree-lined roads and connected separate fortresses in an 1,800-mile wall, which was doubled in length by subsequent dynasties. Qin also constructed legendary palaces for his lifetime activities, but nothing has preserved the emperor’s memory so well in contemporary minds as the preparations he made for his burial.

It took 700,000 workmen 36 years to build his mausoleum and the underground army that would protect him after death. The largest retinue of soldiers--about 6,000--was buried in a rectangular pit the size of three football fields. Arranged in 38 columns, divided into 11 rows of four figures abreast, the military entourage is partitioned by earthen walls that once supported wooden beams and roofs of woven mats, plaster and dirt. This colossal grave, now covered by a hangar-like structure, was opened as a museum in 1979. Though only about 1,000 of the figures and 24 horses have been unearthed and repaired, the sight of them is thrilling.

We gazed down from surrounding walkways into a sea of faces and shuddered with the eerie sensation that a wave of history had surged forward and overwhelmed the ring of gaping tourists. Suddenly, the vast building seemed silent and the clay figures palpably human. Little wonder, for despite their standardized bodies and strictly designed military regalia, the warriors’ faces are the product of individual carving. While the height of their topknots, the shape of their shoes and the style of their armor determine their ranks and positions as infantrymen, generals, cavalrymen or charioteers, their faces embrace all the ethnic groups in China and reflect the diversity of Qin’s actual army.

Like ancient Greek sculpture, this Chinese work was originally painted bright (we would probably say gaudy) colors, but only the faintest traces remain. Unlike the Greeks, who pursued a divine ideal and mythical inspiration, the Chinese were relative realists who reproduced a lifelike army to serve their leader after his demise. The figures’ legs are solid, their torsos and heads hollow. While all were made from molds, the greatest variety of basic shapes was used for the heads. Mustaches, ears, eyes, lips and hair were added later and individually modeled.

The complexity of facial features and expressions on the figures makes the difference between a spectacle that might be merely impressive and one that is authentically moving. It’s as if the modernist grid met August Sander’s “People of the 20th Century” project 2,200 years early in Qin’s army. A stark, symmetrical composition has been softened by time and the neutral gray-brown earth of both the soldiers and their subterranean chamber. Ranks of figures contain profiles of dignified, well-disciplined men who could represent a cross section of facial structures found on a busy street corner of modern Xi’an.

It seems profoundly fitting that a country containing about 23% of the world’s population on about 7% of its land mass would have such a monument as a principal tourist attraction. There’s strength in numbers, even in art, and the power of this collective effort is its illumination of human complexity within a rigid structure. Just as contemporary Chinese bend their individual wills to the good of society, family pressures and government edicts, so these ancient warriors conformed to the desires of a ruler who unified their sprawling, divergent country.

Other stunning monuments--from the Great Wall to the Egyptian pyramids--speak indirectly of the legions of workers who constructed them, in eras too ancient to assimilate. Qin’s silent army exudes a human presence that seems almost as contemporary as historical. There just isn’t anything like it.

Traveling exhibitions have presented a few examples of the terra cotta figures to audiences around the world and the sculpture has been met with fascinated approval. It’s impossible, however, to imagine the impact of the dig from a pristine exhibit. On the museum grounds, several buildings near the pit offer a chance for close inspection of single figures and horses, but they are primarily a footnote. The exception is a display of one of the bronze four-horse chariots, uncovered in 1980. They were created to carry the deceased emperor’s spirit to heaven, and if sheer beauty and technical expertise can do that, they must have succeeded.

After loading up on books and slides at the museum counter, then tunneling through the replica sales force, we boarded the bus for Xi’an. A couple of weeks later, we arrived home to a roach-free house and a daunting stack of correspondence. Somewhere near the bottom was a mail-order catalogue announcing, “Now you can own a replica of the Qin Army in a padded, silk brocade case” for $125.