 Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi’s famous terracotta warriors, discovered at the equally famous archeological site of Xi’an, is on display in Romania for the first time. The Terracotta Army has been included in an exhibition called “Treasures of China”, which awaits all admirers of Chinese culture at the National History Museum in Bucharest. Visitors will get to see first-hand some of the most spectacular valuables of the millennia-old Chinese civilization.
Exhibits date as far back as the Neolithic, with the most recent ones documented under the Ming and Qing dynasties. Thousand-year-old pottery dating back to the Neolithic, bronze ware, known for their superior quality and invaluable importance, prehistoric objects made of ceramic and jade, cultural items tied to the Silk Road, but also artifacts reflecting China’s modern history, these are all but some of the masterpieces on show at the National History Museum.
The highlight of the exhibition is however the real-size Terracotta Army, depicting officers of the Chinese army, whether infantry, archers or knights, whose crafting surely took special skills and whose artistic importance is unquestionable. The Romanian Minister of Culture Daniel Barbu, who attended the opening event, spoke about art as a pathway to eternity.
Daniel Barbu: “The secret of immortality has a simple name: culture, which is inherent to politics. Over 2000 years ago there was a project, when a small country had the vision of a great nation. To quote a famous European dictum of the past century, this nation rose through labor and steel. This nation is China, a country that gained a sense of immortality through culture. And just like any other symbolic cultural endeavor, China used the most basic of raw materials – earth or clay, which it then turned into terracotta”.
The exhibition covers entire millennia of Chinese culture, including the Bronze Age, the unification of China, the Silk Road and Imperial China. Referring to the exhibition, the Chinese Ambassador to Bucharest Huo Yuzhen called it a dialogue in space and time between the civilizations of the West and East, a pillar in the history of cultural exchanges between Romania and China. Romania, which invested a total of 600,000 euros in the prep work, is the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to host the exhibition “Treasures of China”.
The board of the National History Museum in Bucharest has announced that next year the institution will organize a great exhibition in China entitled “Treasures of Romania”.
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2025-04-03
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