Zhao Kangmin: Archaeologist who restored terracotta warriors 1936-2018
● Zhao Kangmin, who has died at the age of 81, was the local museum curator who first recognised the significance of fragments of pottery unearthed in March 1974 by farmers digging a well in Lintong county, in China’s northwestern Shaanxi province.
He went on to piece together the first members of the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (reigned 220-210 BC), the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China’s feudal dynasties.
The farmers did not know that they were digging above the emperor’s buried mausoleum and when, some 4m down, they came across the head of a life-size pottery statue, they assumed it was from a bodhisattva figure (a sort of saint) from an old Buddhist temple.
As they continued to dig, more heads emerged, along with pieces of limbs and torsos, most of which they left lying on the ground.
Zhao heard of the finds about a month later and hopped on his bike to visit the site. “I went to the site with another officer,” he recalled later. “Because we were so excited, we rode on our bicycles so fast it felt as if we were flying.”
By the time he arrived, villagers had already taken some pieces home as trophies. Children were playing games with other fragments. Nonetheless Zhao immediately understood the significance of the find, which he recognised as dating fromthe Qin dynasty (221-206 BC).
Warriors with feet of clay
The terracotta pieces, some as small as a fingernail, were loaded on to trucks and taken to the museum where he worked. Zhao then began the laborious task of piecing them together. Within two months he had reconstructed two life-size warriors, rendered in remarkable detail, and he went on to construct two more warriors plus a horse.
But he was initially nervous about re- porting the find to the Chinese authorities; 1974 was the tail-end of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, when teenage Red Guards, bent on exterminating the “Four Olds” (traditional ideas, customs, culture and “habits of mind”), had terrorised the country. As a historian who had studied China’s ancient emperors and the system of feudalism that had prevailed for centuries, Zhao was regarded as ideologically suspect and had been forced to criticise himself for encouraging the revival of feudalism.
Scoop from an ancient dynasty
The Red Guards had also destroyed many archaeological sites and artefacts, with a particular emphasis on anything resembling an ancient deity.
By chance, however, a journalist visiting his family in the area heard about the discovery and wrote a short article that came to the attention of the authorities.
They immediately sent a team of archaeologists to investigate and excavations soon began in earnest.
Archaeologists would subsequently unearth thousands of figures — infantrymen, officers, archers and charioteers — each with unique facial features, costumes, bronze weapons and even hairstyles. They would also identify nearly 600 sites associated with Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum.
In August 1975 China’s state council decided to build a museum around three major pits lined with the warriors. It is now a Unesco world heritage site and has attracted almost 60 million visitors since it opened in October 1979.
Zhao was born in July 1936 and worked as an archaeologist for more than 40 years, and as the curator of the Lintong District Museum in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi.
In 1990 he was officially recognised by the state council as an expert who had made outstanding contributions to his field.
He is survived by his wife and two sons. — © The Daily Telegraph, London