This was an absolutely fantastic exhibition, showing artifacts from the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor who united China around 200 BC. This tomb is now famous for the terra-cotta army, which was just one part of a funeral complex that took 700,000 workers to create.
The exhibition was stunning with many amazing and historically significant artifacts, intelligently and wittily presented with good use of multimedia. No wonder more than 300,000 people have visited this exhibition in Hong Kong so far.
Video: terra-cotta warrior welcoming visitors
One highlight was the chance to see terra-cotta warriors up close.
Cavalryman with horse.
An archer with some of his original paint still intact. This gives some idea how life-like they would originally have appeared.
A musician
Video: terra-cotta musician and birds
The most amazing artifact was the half-size bronze chariot. As well as being beautufully detailed and well preserved, its also a technically impressive example of casting.
Video: bronze chariot
Crossbow in its holder on the chariot.
This was a surprise: not only were tehe Chinese using cross-bows as early as 200BC, but the Qin were mass-producing them with inter-changable parts. This is a cross-bow trigger mechanism.
At the end of the exhibition was a neat display of how the terra-cotta warriors had been made. Appropriately enough in the form of two terra-cotta dioramas.
The bodies were mass-produced to a few standard types -infantry, cavalry, officers etc.
The heads were sculpted separately presumably in the likeness of individual soldiers since no two are the same.
After the figures were fired, they were painted
Video: production of terra-cotta horse
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