60 Fun Facts About Qin Shi Huang

The emperor's mausoleum is guarded by thousands of life-sized terracotta figures depicting what?

Around 6,000 figures have been excavated, along with 40,000 real bronze weapons.

The emperor joined earlier state walls along the northern frontier to create what?

Hundreds of thousands of workers were mobilised, and an unknown number died.

Qin Shi Huang is remembered as the first emperor of which country?

He unified the warring states in 221 BC and founded the Qin dynasty.

What new title did the King of Qin create for himself in 221 BC, rather than keep the old title of king?

It combined the huang of the mythical Three Sovereigns with the di of the legendary Five Emperors.

In which city, the capital of the state of Zhao, was the future emperor born?

His father was living there as a hostage to guarantee a truce between Qin and Zhao.

Which wealthy merchant helped Ying Zheng's father to the throne and later served as regent?

Sima Qian's Shiji also claims, probably slanderously, that the merchant was the boy's real father.

How old was Ying Zheng when he became King of Qin in 246 BC?

His father, King Zhuangxiang, had reigned for only three years.

How was the future emperor's personal name, Zheng, said to have been chosen?

Zhengyue is the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar.

Which man, disguised as a eunuch, became the queen dowager's lover and staged a coup in 238 BC?

He was caught after boasting at a dinner party that he was the young king's stepfather.

How was the coup leader executed after his rebellion failed?

A bounty of a million copper coins had been placed on his head if taken alive.

How did the disgraced merchant-regent die in 235 BC?

His fall left the young king in full control of Qin.

Which assassin, sent by Crown Prince Dan of Yan in 227 BC, hid a dagger inside a rolled-up map?

He also brought the severed head of a fugitive general as a gift to gain an audience.

Why did King Zheng struggle to defend himself when the dagger was revealed?

None of his courtiers were allowed to carry weapons in his presence, so no one could help.

The musician Gao Jianli tried to kill the king with which instrument, weighted with lead?

The king had already ordered him blinded, but was reluctant to kill so fine a player.

Why did Zhang Liang's 218 BC assassin fail after hurling a metal cone at the procession?

The cone weighed 120 jin, roughly 97 kilograms, and both men escaped the manhunt.

Which was the first of the rival states to fall to Qin, in 230 BC?

Han was the weakest of the Warring States.

Which was the last state to be conquered, completing the unification of China in 221 BC?

Its King Jian was captured without much resistance.

How did Qin forces bring about the surrender of Wei in 225 BC?

The capital was Daliang, near modern Kaifeng.

Which minister worked with the emperor on the great programme of standardisation?

He was later a co-conspirator in forging the emperor's will.

Into how many commanderies was the empire first divided after 221 BC?

The number later rose to 40; below them came counties, townships and hundred-family units.

Which coin became the standard currency across the newly unified empire?

Weights, measures and even wagon axle lengths were standardised at the same time.

Which style of Chinese writing became the official standard across the empire?

Regional scripts were abolished, creating one written language despite many spoken dialects.

What did the emperor have made from the confiscated bronze weapons of the conquered states?

Each colossus was said to stand about 11.5 metres tall and weigh around 70 tons.

Which school of thought became the mandatory ideology of the Qin dynasty?

The Hundred Schools of Thought of the Warring States era were suppressed.

Which subjects were exempted when the emperor ordered books burned from 213 BC?

Histories of the state of Qin itself were also spared.

According to the Shiji, how many scholars did the emperor have buried alive in 212 BC?

Recent research suggests the victims were more likely alchemists who had deceived him.

Which of the emperor's sons openly criticised him for the burial of the scholars?

He was later tricked into suicide by a forged letter after his father's death.

Which element and colour did the Qin dynasty adopt under the theory of the five elements?

The Zhou were held to have ruled by fire, so the next element in the cycle was chosen.

Which number was given special significance under the Qin's element theory?

Carriages were two metres wide and official hats 15 centimetres long, in keeping with the scheme.

Which general led the 215 BC campaign that drove the Xiongnu from the Ordos Plateau?

The same general was later ordered to begin construction of the emperor's tomb.

What did the emperor order done to the old walls that had separated the former warring states?

Only the northern frontier walls were connected and extended against the Xiongnu.

The Lingqu Canal, begun in 214 BC, links tributaries of which two great waterways?

It is counted with the Great Wall and Dujiangyan as one of the three great feats of ancient Chinese engineering.

Which island did the emperor visit three times in his search for the elixir of life?

He fell prey to many fraudulent elixirs in his obsessive quest.

Whom did the emperor send with ships full of young men and women to find the mystical Mount Penglai?

Legend says the expedition never returned and instead reached Japan.

Per a 10th-century Chinese monk, the emperor's expedition leader gave the name Penglai to which Japanese mountain?

Memorials to the alchemist-explorer survive at several sites in Japan.

Why did the emperor build tunnels and covered passageways between his 200-plus palaces?

He also began calling himself The Immortal in 212 BC.

What seditious words were carved on a meteorite that fell in 211 BC?

When no one confessed, everyone living nearby was executed and the stone was pulverised.

How old was the emperor when he died in 210 BC?

He died at Shaqiu during his fifth tour of eastern China, about two months' travel from the capital.

Which substance in a supposed elixir of immortality is suspected of poisoning the emperor?

Probes into his tomb have found mercury levels 100 times the natural rate.

What did the chancellor order carried around the emperor's wagon to hide the smell of his corpse?

His death was concealed for the two-month journey back to Xianyang.

Which eunuch conspired with the chancellor to forge the emperor's will and enthrone Huhai?

The forged letter ordered the heir and his general to commit suicide.

What did the eunuch chancellor insist a deer was, in a famous loyalty test of the Second Emperor?

The resulting chengyu now means deliberately peddling a falsehood.

Roughly how many children is the emperor said to have had?

Despite numerous concubines, he appears never to have named an empress.

According to Sima Qian, how many men laboured to build the emperor's mausoleum?

Historian John Man notes that is more than the population of any city on Earth at the time.

At the foot of which mountain was the emperor's tomb built?

The main burial chamber has never been opened and appears to be intact.

What did Sima Qian say was rigged inside the tomb to shoot intruders?

The tomb is also said to have contained rare utensils and wonderful objects.

On what date did farmers digging a well discover the first terracotta warriors?

Sima Qian, oddly, never mentioned the clay army at all.

Roughly how many terracotta statues have been excavated at the mausoleum?

They were made from mix-and-match moulds and then individualised by hand.

Which Han dynasty writer's essay The Faults of Qin became the standard verdict on the dynasty's collapse?

He blamed the fall on a ruler who lacked humaneness and rightness.

Which leader boasted in 1958 of surpassing the First Emperor a hundredfold in burying scholars?

After 1972 official Chinese histories recast the emperor as a far-sighted unifier.

Which Argentine writer published the essay The Wall and the Books about the emperor in 1952?

It appeared in the collection Other Inquisitions.

Jet Li plays a nameless assassin plotting against the King of Qin in which 2002 film?

Li also played the emperor himself in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Which famous jade was carved into the Heirloom Seal of the Realm on the emperor's orders?

The seal passed from emperor to emperor until it was lost in the 10th century.

The Qin capital Xianyang fell in 206 BC, ending the dynasty. Near which modern city did it stand?

It sat on the Wei River near the former Zhou capital of Fenghao.

Which first-person pronoun did the emperor reserve for his exclusive use?

He also had his personal name Zheng declared taboo.

The terracotta soldiers were laid out to protect the tomb from which direction, where the conquered states lay?

The four main pits sit about 1,500 metres from the burial mound and were found seven metres below the excavation level.

Where did the sculptors of the terracotta figures sign their names?

Heads, arms, legs and torsos were made separately in workshops and luted together before the figures were placed in formation.

What is in Pit 4 of the mausoleum's four main pits?

It may have been left unfinished; Pit 3 is the command post and Pit 2 holds cavalry, infantry and war chariots.

Fire damage and missing weapons in the pits are taken as evidence of looting by which rebel leader?

The burning is thought to have collapsed the roof and crushed the figures, which have since been restored from fragments.

Most of the 40,000-plus bronze weapon items recovered from the pits are of which kind?

They are usually found in bundles of 100; most of the army's real weapons were looted soon after burial or rotted away.