Monday felt like Christmas morning at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
But, instead of unwrapping gifts under the tree, museum curators unboxed something historic: 2,200-year-old terracotta warriors from China.
When the Bowers’ “World of the Terracotta Warriors” exhibit opens on Saturday, May 24, it will mark the first time in seven years that any of the famous 8,000 statues from Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum in Xi’an, China, have been displayed in the U.S., museum officials said.
Anticipation filled the air Monday as a team of professional movers, overseen by a Chinese official from the mausoleum site museum, unscrewed the final bolts from blue shipping containers containing the artifacts.
Several terracotta warriors visited the Bowers twice before, in 2008 and 2011, but the latest installation will feature newly unearthed finds never before seen in America, officials said.
The exhibition will include five terracotta warriors, jade and gold ornaments, bronze vessels and dozens of relics unearthed throughout the Shaanxi province in the 21st century.
These newly discovered relics, including remnants of chariots believed to be more than 3,000 years old, could alter our understanding of history, said Bowers President and CEO Seán O’Harrow.
“The chariots suggest that transcontinental commerce along the Silk Road could have occurred 1,000 years earlier than previously believed,” he said.
O’Harrow watched anxiously, phone in hand to record, as Bowers Chief Curator Tianlong Jiao and his Chinese counterpart orchestrated the delicate unpacking process of the ceramic army.
The terracotta warriors are generally around 6 feet tall and weigh up to 600 pounds, yet, due to their age and significance, they must be handled with the utmost finesse.
Restless in his endeavor, Jiao paused work Monday morning just long enough to show a sneak preview of two archers’ earthen ankles while the rest of their bodies remained mummified in the layers upon layers of packing wrap that kept them safe on their journey overseas.
When O’Harrow saw the ancient ankles intact, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“As we in the United States celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary, we’re doing an exhibition on something that is about 15 times older,” he said. “I’d like for visitors to try to get their heads around that perspective and see what people were up to so long ago and also see how similar they are to people today.”
The exhibition aims to get visitors thinking about the relationship between old and new with a state-of-the-art multimedia show adjacent to the ancient artifacts.
This immersive experience spans 1,500 years of Chinese history, tracing the cultural and political developments that led to Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s rise and the unification of dynastic China.
“Emperor Qin Shi Huang was similar to the Chinese equivalent of Napoleon,” O’Harrow said — the emporer overcame warring factions to unite all of China for the first time and then ordered the construction of China’s Great Wall, an extensive national road system and massive hydraulic engineering projects to enable agriculture throughout the empire.
Jiao said it took a “long process” to gain approval from China to receive the artifacts in Santa Ana.
So, how did the Bowers pull it off?
“I think it has a lot to do with trust and expertise,” O’Harrow said. “We’ve been working with the Chinese government and museums in China for well over a quarter of a century. Our chairwoman, Anne Shih, who has been working with us for almost 30 years, has built a reputation in China for arranging these projects.”
“Bringing this to Orange County for local people to be able to see something that is so earth-shatteringly significant is quite wonderful,” he added.
The special Bowers Museum exhibit will run from Saturday through Oct. 19. Get more information at bowers.org/warriors.