We Are the Professional Doctors of Terracotta Warriors

Mr. LanDesheng is an expert in the protection and restoration of cultural relics in the Qinshihuang Mausoleum Museum. When he was transferred to work in 1997, he was assigned to pit No. 1 of the terracotta warriors. In the past 22 years, his restoration team has restored more than 150 terracotta warriors and horses.

“The conservation and restoration work of the Terracotta Warriors, image a little bit, like a hospital to patients, mainly is the object is different. That’s why I said there is the Forbidden City Hospital in Beijing and the Terracotta Army Hospital in Xi’an, but we are the specialist doctors for the Terracotta Army, mainly for the artifacts excavated from the Terracotta Army.” Mr. Lan said.

Consultation based on information such as size and shape of the excavated fragments

When travelers visit the Terracotta Warriors, they will find an open restoration site on the west side of Pit 1. Seven or eight mechanics are busy there: some are cleaning, some are putting together, some are drawing. On a black table at the site, lying next they are ready to restore the “T23G8:2/68” terracotta warriors. The Qin “soldier” has been broken into more than 400 pieces, in “serious condition”.

None of the Terracotta Warriors were complete when they were unearthed, and over 2,000 years, through underground burial and environmental changes since they were unearthed, the Terracotta Warriors have been disfigured and mutilated when discovered. For this reason, Mr.Lan has called his workshop the “Terracotta Warrior Hospital” and has developed a restoration process.

“The first step is to extract the individual fragments of the terracotta warriors excavated from the archaeological site to the conservation and restoration room, and take photos of the whole after reasonable placement of the broken pieces of pottery according to the parts of the terracotta warriors and horses, and then take photos of the individual fragments separately. I call this a registration.” Mr.Lan said.

Then, we have to diagnose the debris according to its size, shape, the color of painting and other information, identify various diseases on the surface of the debris, analyze the cause of the disease, clean it, remove various diseases from the debris, restore the debris to a healthy level and reinforce it with painting.

Mr. Lan restoring the Terracotta Warriors

After the processing of the fragments is finished, it is time for the initial test piecing. The piecing is done from the bottom to the top, taking the largest priority, and the terracotta warriors are first pieced into shape.

“The Terracotta Warriors are different from other relics in that there are especially many fragments. Before our restoration technicians officially start restoration work, they have to practice for one to three years just to put the puzzle together.” Says Mr. Lan, “If there is a 0.1 mm deviation in the bottom fragment, it won’t fit together by the head.”

Bonding is also an important step next, and in their experience, the strength of the bonding agent is less than or equal to the strength of the pottery to achieve the best results.

“At this point, a Qin Dynasty soldier is primed to take shape.”Mr.Lan said, “For each ‘resurrected’ soldier, we create a conservation and restoration file, his account book, and after one to three months of observation, the artifact can be transferred to the collections management department or the archaeological team.” The catalogued and registered collection number becomes the ID number of the terracotta figurine, and the painted terracotta warriors are placed into the original excavation site for display by excavation location and coordinates.

“The number of fragments varies, as does the time it takes to protect and restore them. At least, it takes 3 people to restore 1 to 3 months. Currently, the longest time spent is a general figurine, which the team restored for two full years.” Lander Province said.

Preserving the color on terracotta warriors after excavation.

The idea that the terracotta warriors lost their color within minutes of being unearthed was once very popular. Lander specifically dispelled the rumor: “After all the ravages, the terracotta warriors themselves were not in very good condition when they were unearthed with the remaining color.” How to protect what little color painting remains has also been a problem for archaeologists.

Since the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors by local villagers on March 29, 1974, Pit 1 has undergone three excavations.

The first excavation began in 1978 and lasted until 1984, when the Terracotta Army Archaeological Team of Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology excavated an area of 2,000 square meters and unearthed more than 1,000 terracotta warriors and horses, 8 chariots, 32 ceramic horses, and nearly 10,000 pieces of various bronzes, and has protected and restored more than 1,000 pieces of terracotta warriors and horses.

The second time was in 1985. At that time, the excavation area was 200 square meters, and 704 pieces of broken pottery figurines were detected. However, as soon as the fragments were exposed, archaeologists saw that this area was more painted, and there was no corresponding technical force for conservation, so the excavation was stopped after one year. Now visitors can see the debris still lying on the ground in the center of pit one is the site of the second excavation.

In order to solve the many problems that arise in the protection of cultural relics in archaeological excavations, the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage has signed a technical cooperation research project on the protection of cultural relics with the Bavarian State Bureau of Cultural Heritage Protection in Germany and the Central Museum of Roman Germania in Mainz, Germany.

“Before that, we used the traditional method of conservation and restoration. after the official cooperation with Germany in 1992, we entered the stage of scientific conservation and restoration.” Mr. Lan said.

Putting together the Terracotta Warriors

The painting of the terracotta warriors is the last step in the production, where the figurines are coated with raw lacquer as a base, and then the colors are applied on top. “After years of time, the lacquer adhesion is gone, causing many colors to peel off with the clay. So we often need to extract the color from the mud and attach it back to the figurines, which is very difficult.” Mr.Lan said.

At present, they have mastered two better methods to protect the painting: the combined treatment method with anti-wrinkle shrinkage agent and reinforcement agent and the monomer penetration electron beam irradiation polymerization reinforcement protection method. “These two protection methods we successfully applied on Terracotta Warriors Pit 1 and Pit 2, and now the colors are very good.” Mr. Land said.

With the gradual maturation of technology, the third excavation was launched on June 13, 2009 and continues to this day. The excavation area of 400 square meters, more than 200 pieces of terracotta warriors excavated, has been scientifically restored 120 pieces is through the restoration team completed by Mr. Lan.

When it comes to which of the restored Terracotta Warriors is the most beautiful, Lan is not biased, he thinks they are all good. “But the most representative ones that have been unearthed are the imperial hand figurines and the general figurines, which are very well colored. Our third archaeological excavation has an ‘exhibition of archaeological work to preserve color,’ which includes these two typical terracotta figurines.” Lan said.

Archaeologists recovered the Qin terracotta warriors in a variety of colors, one of which is very special – “Chinese purple”. This purple pigment has not been found in nature yet and is thought to be artificially manufactured.

Every year during the boom tour season, Terracotta Warriors is full of travelers. This year, during National Day, 132,000 visitors were recorded in a single day, another record high. However, how bustling the place is during the day, how quiet it is at night.

Sometimes the restoration task is heavy and Lan will work late into the night. “It’s a different feeling at night than it is during the day. The already restored Qin figurines stand there neatly and they seem to be able to talk to you.” Lan said he has been restoring Qin figurines for more than 20 years, and sometimes when he looks at them, he can feel the soldiers in front of him blinking at him. “Once I restored a horse that had a lifelike mane, with eyes, tongue, and teeth so evocative that I even put my hand in it from time to time to see if it could bite,” Lan said there were moments when he felt he had crossed over in time and space and communicated with artisans from more than 2,000 years ago. “Even though one side is a Qin Dynasty artisan and the other is a modern restorer, the original intention is the same. They want to make the terracotta warriors and horses well and show the aura of the Qin army, and we want to make the mutilated terracotta warriors and horses be able to recreate the original appearance and pass on the history.”

The Terracotta Army conservation and restoration team currently consists of 25 experts, mainly from the conservation of cultural relics, but also from various disciplines such as chemistry, history, biology, and engineering. In addition, there are 50 conservation and restoration technicians.

Due to the competence of this restoration team, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage has set up a key scientific research base for the conservation of terracotta painted relics at the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum Museum. They not only undertake the protection and restoration of terracotta warriors and horses, but also held a training course on the restoration and protection of pottery painted cultural relics; established the “pottery painted cultural relics protection workstation” and other three grass-roots workstations, driving the improvement of grass-roots protection and restoration level, and become the national leader in the protection of pottery painted cultural relics.