Thursday 18 October 2012

Lookalike (8)

Hannah Papa and Terry Cotta the warrior are surely related.


   Hannah Papa                                Terry Cotta

If you detect some resemblance you are not mistaken.   One of the fun exhibits was a system to scan your face and then project it onto a terra-cotta warrior model.   


This is Hannah-papa and Hanna-mama together.  Isn't that romantic!



Eternal Realm of China's First Emperor

Granddad's top priority for his return to Hong Kong was to visit the block-buster exhibition of artifacts from the tomb of China's first emperor at the Hong Kong Museum of History.   It was booked-out when they visited last time, so this time we made sure to visit first thing on a weekday morning.


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

Video:  terra-cotta warriors attacking Japanese 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




Granny and Granddad

Granny and Granddad stopped over in Hong Kong again on their way back from  their big trip to Europe, and I took some more time off work.

The temperature in Hong Kong is now much more comfortable than when they were here in Aug.  Nevertheless we took it easy and didn't embark on any major sight-seeing expeditions this time.

Dad was happy to catch up with the papers.

We did one short 'neco sampo' in the park.



And tried to find some good chinese food.  This is Granny at Ming Yuen


And of course the obligatory Saturday evening poolside buffet.

Video:  Hannah didn't miss the opportunity to tell Granny and Granddad what she wants for her birthday.





Sunday 14 October 2012

New Posts

Since it was a quiet weekend I was able to clear some of the back-log from 2011 caused by the March earthquake and then relocating to Hong Kong.

Back-dated posts added recently.

Charity Bazar (7-Oct-12)
Parklife 4 (7-Oct-12)
Neco Sampo (6-Oct-12)  link

NZ - Milford Sound (18-Dec-12)  link
NZ - Queenstown  (17-Dec-11)  link
Happy Holidays (16-Dec-11)  link

Aftershocks (30-Nov-11)  link
RIP Sasuke 2002-2011  (11-Nov-11)  link

Yoyogi International School Graduation Ceremony (8-Jun-11) link
Komoso (5-Jun-11) link