China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors
by Frances Wood
St Martin's Press, HK$172
One can't help but like intriguing author Frances Wood, who slips herself into the text from time to time: a welcome supernumerary in China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors.
Wood is head of the Chinese Department at the British Library in London, drew rations when she was studying in the People's Republic during the Cultural Revolution and has since led tourists to what is sometimes described as the Eighth Wonder of the World, in Xian. 'The excitement of the find is hard to describe,' she writes, and it is her obvious passion for her subject that makes this book so readable. That, and her down-to-earth, straightforward attitudes and style.
Wood points out that few totally reliable sources exist from the time when Qin Shi Huangdi reigned in the second century BC; and she brushes off such irrelevancies as the book that posited there was a Da Vinci code entwined in the buried army's hairstyles, branding it 'rather dotty'.
Many people have a vague idea of the pivotal events of Chinese history. Here, in plain words but with a wealth of detail, Wood outlines the life and times of a man who did so much to shape the country that hosted its first Olympic Games this year.