Pictured above is a section of the old city district in Xi’an, China.  Xi’an, originally called “Chang An,” was the Chinese imperial capital during the formative Qin dynasty, and it remained the capital in the Han and Tang dynasties.  The Han and Tang were golden eras in Chinese history, and much of the original literature that lies at the root of Chinese medicine came from Han dynasty classics such as the Nei Jing and the Shang Han Lun/Jin Gui Yao Lue.  The city of Chang An reached its peak in the Tang dynasty, and the modern day center of Xi’an is designed to replicate the feeling of the ancient Tang capital.  As the planet’s first city to have a million residents, Chang An was by far the world’s most advanced city during its heyday and it was known for having an extremely sophisticated cultural feel during the Tang.  

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Today, Xi’an is known for its arts and culture, and it is very close to the tombs of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi-Huang. Qin Shi-Huang’s tomb boasts the world famous terra cotta warriors, which are truly magnificent to behold.  Qin Shi-Huang was buried with an army of terra cotta warriors, each of which was carved as a life-sized statue based on real human models from Qin’s standing army.  The emperor presumably believed that these warriors would protect him in the afterlife, and the scope of the project is absolutely astounding.

Three large pits house most of the known soldiers, and estimates suggest that there are over 8000 foot soldiers, over 100 chariots, and over 500 horses.  The army was arranged in military formation, providing historians with valuable insights into the military structure during the Qin dynasty.  Officers can be found with all their markings of rank, and each statue was originally done in full color, which was amazingly well-preserved up to the moment of excavation.  Incredibly, their weapons were rust-free and sharp, perfectly preserved by an ancient technique that was lost and not duplicated by metallurgists until around 2000 years after the construction of the tombs.  Discovered accidentally by local farmers (the farmer who found them sits in the museum signing autographs all day) in 1974, the known tombs feel like they are just barely scratching the surface of the full extent of the mausoleum.  A huge area sits under government control awaiting future excavation, and the patient Chinese government is essentially waiting for the technology to advance a few more decades (for better preservation) before they unearth what is speculated to be the central burial chamber of Qin Shi-Huang himself.  Pretty amazing stuff, well worth a visit.

Seeing the ancient terra cotta warriors, one cannot help but wonder at how many ancient technologies have come and gone.  In ancient Chinese herbal medicine, there were a number of techniques that qualify as highly sophisticated, and the entire ancient world of Chinese fabric- and paper-making (the arts of refining hemp and silk) was highly advanced.  Various minerals were highly purified and refined by early pharmaceutical pioneers, and early medicinal therapy often overlapped with Taoist efforts in alchemy and the pursuit of elixirs of immortality.  Granted, some of these Taoist expeditions into the use of cinnabar as an immortal elixir would now be regarded as heavy metal poisoning, but the redness of the cheeks and the relatively slow decay of the corpse as a result of these experiments made ancient Taoists think that they were getting close to the original concept of the philosopher’s stone.  As a consequence of this search, advanced methods such as “water-grinding” (shui fei) were developed to refine minerals, and to this day water-grinding is used in the processing of certain Chinese medicinal materials. 

In downtown Xi'an there is a pagoda that was built to house a monk who was credited with bringing Buddhism to China.  Apparently one of the Tang emperors was interested in learning more, so he sent a monk to India to gather texts and knowledge.  As the story goes, the monk brought back an entire library of books and spent decades living in the pagoda translating ancient Buddhist works into Chinese.  Buddhism flowered in China during the Tang, and the highly advanced world of Tang literati brought us TCM classics such as Sun Simiao’s Qian Jin Yao Fang (Thousand Gold Formulary) and the Tang Ben Cao (Tang Materia Medica), which was the first Imperial collection of materia medica resources.

Blue Poppy is going to start importing scrolls of Chinese art for customers that seek to give their office a more traditional Chinese feel.  We have commissioned an artist in Xi’an to paint the scrolls for us, and we will be selecting the designs from a wide range of examples over the next few months here at the office.  Check back with us in the autumn for this exciting new addition!