First Emperor’s Tomb

Although we may imagine the First Emperor commanding the underground terracotta army in his afterlife, his spirit appeared to show little interest in doing so. The pits containing the army are located nearly a mile east of the tomb.¹ The six thousand or so terracotta soldiers in Pit 1,² the largest of the cluster of four pits, all face east. But the emperor’s afterlife spirit did not seem to be in sync. The bronze carriages unearthed west of the tomb,³ one of which is now commonly known as the emperor’s “spirit carriage,”⁴ decidedly face west. If the terracotta army’s role was to safeguard the eternal peace of the emperor’s tomb, the commander in chief’s spirit—presumably ready to climb into the bronze carriage—seems to have turned his back on his afterlife army.

Formulated thus, the matter is apparently fraught with problems. But these problems are rooted in our own notion of an afterlife “spirit.” Does our imagined scenario of a spirit riding in a carriage have a historical basis in the third century BCE context? For this scenario to work, the spirit needs to have a figural form that behaves much like a living person,⁵ and this being would need to know how to get into the vehicle and ride off into the sunset—be it the west or heaven. In the third century BCE, the Chinese imagination had not yet conceived notions of this kind regarding modes of existence in the afterlife. That would come later.

Life and death, in the third century BCE, were defined largely with regard to the condition of breath. Human existence was understood as part of a cosmos made up of all-permeating “breath,” or qi. Everything in the universe was conceived in terms of qi. Concentration of breath meant life; dispersion spelled death. Existence after death was understood as an amorphous state, a nebulous mass of scattered breaths that tended to fly around aimlessly. “That the bones and flesh should return again to the earth is what is appointed. But the spirit in its energy can go everywhere; it can go everywhere.”⁶ Thus sighed a wise man, resignedly, in an ancient text. However, the spirit’s waywardness was of less concern than its dispersion. What we know of the burial practices of the third and second centuries BCE suggests that prevention of spiritual dispersion was the governing principle in the care of the dead⁷. An effective way to counteract dispersion, so it was believed, was simply to collect and reconcentrate those scattered breaths. It is precisely this notion that informs the unusual decorative design on the First Emperor’s “spirit carriage.”

In 1980, Chinese archaeologists discovered an accessory pit, about twenty yards west of the First Emperor’s tomb mound, containing two half life-size bronze carriages, each drawn by four bronze horses (fig. 1).

The front vehicle, commanded by a standing figure, is historically termed a “standing carriage”; the rear one is a “sedan carriage” (anche). They served different purposes, the standing carriage heading up the caravan and the sedan carriage conveying a seated dignitary. The design of this sedan carriage is unprecedented. Normally the passenger sat alongside the driver. To accommodate a female passenger or a dignitary, a back seat was created by drawing a curtain behind the driver, but driver and passenger still shared one compartment (fig. 2).

The sedan carriage from the First Emperor’s tomb, however, places the driver outside the passenger compartment. Historically known as the “all-season carriage” (wenliangche), the vehicle is completely enclosed, with three windows and a back door. It preserves the design of the notorious real-life all-season carriage used by the emperor in the final days of his life.

In 210 BCE, the emperor embarked on a tour of the country—his fifth and, as it would prove, his final one. His entourage included his youngest son, Hu Hai (221–206 BCE); the minister Li Si (c. 280–208 BCE); Hu’s former tutor, the chief eunuch Zhao Gao (d. 207 BCE); and other eunuchs. The emperor died on the road, leaving an edict to summon Prince Fu Su (d. 210 BCE), his trusted eldest son and heir apparent, to return from the northern frontier and supervise the emperor’s funeral in the capital. The top-level party accompanying the emperor on his tour kept the death secret and continued to act as if the emperor were still alive. They placed the coffin in the all-season carriage, escorted by the eunuchs close to the emperor. Wherever they arrived, they pretended to present food to the occupant of the carriage. As the emperor’s death occurred in summer, the decomposing body began to reek, so dried fish were loaded on the escorting officials’ carriages to disguise the odor.⁸

Though half life-size, the bronze carriage unearthed from the tomb site appears to be a faithful replica of the all-season vehicle that transported the emperor’s coffin. As such, it presents a problem. Being half life-size, it would have been considered a “model carriage” (ouche), or a “send-off carriage” (qianche), normally crude in design and made of wood as a “spirit article” which would have been buried in the tomb chamber.⁹ The bronze carriage is anything but crude, nor was it interred in the tomb chamber.

The two-carriage set was crated in a completely sealed wooden compartment with no hint of any passageway to the tomb chamber.¹⁰ Even allowing for some peculiar behavior associated with the imaginary denizens of the netherworld, we are hard pressed to explain why the wooden chamber contains no doorway—not even a symbolic one—for the emperor’s spirit, if there was one, to access. The tightly sealed carriage pit’s isolation and insulation from the tomb chamber are striking.

The problem stems from our assumption that the dead emperor’s spirit would have had a distinct form that would move about, doing things the way living humans do. Was the emperor imagined to have a figural spirit capable, in the afterlife, of riding in the carriage as he would have in life? As mentioned earlier, death in third century BCE meant simply a state of scattered breaths. Any hope of reversing the deadening course—often symbolically—relied on collecting and concentrating those breaths.

The pictorial decoration of the bronze sedan carriage registers a symbolic program for reconcentrating the breaths. The various painted patterns that adorn the carriage, both inside and out, take two significant basic forms: cloud-scrolls and hard-edged geometrical shapes with lozenge patterns predominating (fig. 3).¹¹

Their arrangement across the carriage is revealing, and a distribution pattern is immediately discernible. Regardless of the motif, however, the decorated field is rimmed by bands of hard-edged geometrical patterns. The deliberate ordering of the motifs is most strikingly apparent on the ornamentation of the back door (fig. 4).

The inside panel features cloud-scrolls exclusively, whereas the outer face is covered with hard-edged lozenge patterns. While this comes as a bit of a surprise, since we would expect the clouds to be outside, there is a good reason for it. We can, in fact, detect a deliberate spatial demarcation: cloud patterns are meant to be rimmed in from the edges or, as with the door, contained inside the carriage.

What do the flowing cloud-scrolls and hard-edged lozenges represent then? If each is taken on its own, the precise symbolic significance and function is hard to determine. But when they are considered in relation to each other, as opposites, their significance begins to emerge. The two motifs appear to play off each other. Together, they spell out a transformative process through which breaths, signified by the cloud-scrolls, harden into some sort of quintessential spiritual permanence signaled by hard-edged lozenges.¹²

A tomb built some four decades after the First Emperor’s death elucidates this process. Mawangdui Tomb 1, dated sometime after 168 BCE, contains a set of four nesting coffins, all with painted surfaces (fig. 5).

A symbolic logic of transformation governs the decorative program, which proceeds from the outside in. The subject is the tomb occupant’s postmortem spirit, and the program is tantamount to a roadmap or itinerary for the spirit, running in stages the gamut of afterlife transformation.¹³ In the initial stage, the breaths of the deceased are scattered. Through various symbolic efforts concentrating and refining the breaths, the spirit “flows into form” (liuxing); that is, the scattered breaths are gathered into a cohesive, momentary “born-again” figural form that has enough energy to levitate. The final stage envisioned for the afterlife metamorphosis is the subliming of the reconstituted bodily form:¹⁴ its dissolution, followed by crystallization into a heightened state of permanence that transcends time.¹⁵

Most notable is the role different types of decorative motifs play in this transformation scenario. The interplay of design motifs (cloud-scrolls vs. lozenges) on the First Emperor’s bronze carriage reappears in the second-century BCE tomb in a more complex form, in which the two motifs bookend the transformation (fig. 6).

The cloud-scrolls start the process on the second coffin. The program then goes through a convoluted metamorphosis in which the cloud patterns intermingle with—and gradually morph into—lozenge patterns. The grand finale occurs in the innermost coffin. Opening the coffin lid reveals a decorative panel covered with lozenge patterns. The significance of the two design motifs thus becomes clear. They mark the beginning and the end of the metamorphosis of scattered breaths into crystalline hardness. Mawangdui Tomb 1 spells out this process with a full pictorial program. The Qin bronze carriage elliptically telegraphs the process by simply juxtaposing the beginning and the end, omitting what occurs in between.

Represented on the Mawangdui coffins (and implicit in the Qin carriage design) is a set of symbolic regimens associated with ancient Chinese life-prolonging macrobiotic practices: physiological alchemy,¹⁶ dietetics, breathing exercises, and sexual practices.¹⁷ These were part of an overall macrobiotic regimen that gained currency in the third century BCE. The underlying principle is the gathering of scattered breaths and conjugation of their yin (earth, night, winter, cold, etc.) and yang (heaven, day, summer, warm, etc.) elements in a refining process. Similar principles inform the symbolic ritual of revitalizing the dead. As the dead could not be expected to practice macrobiotic exercises, symbolic means—in the form of pictorial decoration, arrangement of objects, and so on—were used to effect the “revivification of the entombed dead.”¹⁸ Codified visual motifs became key elements of such programs. Cloud patterns, signifying scattered breaths, tend to be the starting point. The culmination of the collecting and refining process of transformation is marked by diamond- or lozenge-shaped patterns, suggesting hardened permanence (alternatively described in ancient texts as the crystalline, jadelike topography of the immortalityconferring Mount Kunlun in the imaginary west).

A bas-relief on an Eastern Han (25–220 CE) sarcophagus presents the transformation from cloud shape (scattered breaths) to lozenge pattern (hardened, jadelike state of sublimation) most succinctly (fig. 7).

A funerary carriage transports the spirit of the newly dead, a mass of breaths, into the picture from the left. The breath-stuff is placed in a tripod for alchemical refinement. Good things start to happen. The ethereal breaths are consolidated and refined into hefty substance, so heavy that two strong men have a hard time lifting the vessel. What takes place here is no ordinary alchemy. The refining process sends sparks flying, which form a pair of disembodied eyes, hovering above the vessel. Ancient texts typically describe such a manifestation as the “arrival of the spiritual intelligence” following a successful macrobiotic regimen. The columns flanking the tripod scene clearly register the before-and-after conditions bracketing the alchemical process. On the left, wavy lines similar to cloud-scrolls suggest the scattered and nebulous breaths “before”; on the right, angular geometrical forms, those lozenge- or diamond-shaped patterns, signal the “after” moment. The scene at the right denotes yin-yang harmony, either the prescribed yin-yang breath conjugation that leads to the alchemical condensation of breaths, or the bliss which follows. In any case, what we have here is the cloud-to-lozenge or breath-to-consolidation transformation—registered in the First Emperor’s bronze sedan carriage as well.

With the parallel examples of the Mawangdui coffins and the Han sarcophagus in mind, we can better appreciate the decorative program of the sedan carriage. Now the distribution patterns start to make sense: the dominance of the cloud and lozenge patterns, the enclosure of a field of cloud-scrolls with lozenge patterns, and the back door that keeps the cloud-scrolls inside and the lozenge patterns outside. The purpose was apparently to circumscribe and rim in the scattered breath.

The scale of the carriage, at half life-size, is also significant. There would seem to be no expectation of a figural, humanlike spirit—the emperor’s spiritual doppelgänger—showing up and crawling inside. Its size implies that the carriage is no more than a symbolic container whose contents, as the cloud decoration suggests, are merely a mass of nebulous scattered breaths. The vehicle was designed to contain the breaths until their eventual hardening. A telltale detail reinforces this impression. Clearly, the bronze carriage mimics the all-season sedan carriage used in the emperor’s final days. But does the replica retain accommodation for a human form to be seated inside? Its reduced scale already says no. Furthermore, when a dignitary of that time rode in a sedan carriage, a pair of armed guards of honor or senior officials flanked the driver to escort the distinguished vehicle. Yet here there is only the driver, alone on the front seat. This implies that the design did not presume a dignified passenger, in his figural form, inside the compartment. In fact, the compartment of the bronze carriage has been stretched into an oblong shape to hold a casket—or a nebulous mass of breaths.

From the well-wishing viewpoint of the living, what should happen to the deceased person’s mass of breaths? A simple answer has already been given: they should be gathered and consolidated. Symbolic means were devised to make that happen. One way was to refine the breaths in a crucible (real or imaginary). That process is demonstrated in the bas-relief on the Han sarcophagus discussed above. The tripod in the middle, attended by two bare-chested strong men, is the crucible in which the scattered breaths are refined into consolidated substance.

The process depicted in this scene is an instance of both physiological and physical alchemy. Its rationale was derived from macrobiotic therapies practiced by the living with the aim of revitalization. These included breathing exercises and various other activities, all united by a basic governing principle. The goal was, invariably, consolidation of scattered breaths, and this was achieved through alchemy. In this macrobiotic context, the alchemy was sometimes metaphorical and sometimes literal. It might involve a physiological activity (such as a breathing exercise), or it might denote the physical refinement of alchemical substances. In ancient texts, it is not always clear whether “alchemy” is of the physiological or the physical kind. What matters for us is the principle underlying both: the conviction that the nebulous breaths—or elements (e.g., mercury) embodying breaths—could be transmuted into a magical crystalline substance that is transcendent and permanent.

Two seventeenth-century prints illustrate the concept and the process. One print demonstrates the equivocal space in which the alchemical process occurs (fig. 8).

Here the crucible—which could be a physical entity or simply a trope—is located somewhere near the abdomen of the meditation practitioner, who is holding the sun and moon. The human body is thus correlated with the cosmos. The figural space in question oscillates between body and cosmos. The other print demonstrates how the yin-yang alchemical conjugation takes place (fig. 9).

The yin and yang breaths, pictured here as a boy and a girl respectively riding a tiger and dragon, converge in the alchemical crucible. The symbolic yin-yang copulation will result in a condition of regenerated vitality.

If there are doubts about the relevance of seventeenth-century prints to third-century BCE practice, a bas-relief on a Han sarcophagus (fig. 10) will help dispel them.

It contains all the essential elements of the physiological alchemy diagrammed in the print: the dragon and tiger embodying the yin and yang breaths converging on the cauldron. The circle signals the union, and the pair of eyes on the cauldron indicates the arrival of spiritual illumination following the yin-yang conjugation. This is similar to the bas-relief of a tripod on the Han sarcophagus from Luzhou (fig. 7), only there the eyes appear in midair. The theme is the same: conjoining of the yin and yang breaths leads to revitalization.

With regard to the First Emperor’s tomb site, the Luzhou bas-relief is doubly suggestive and revealing. First of all, it graphically illustrates the metamorphosis induced by physiological alchemy: nebulous breaths (cloud patterns) harden into consolidated substance (hard-edged lozenges). But that is just the beginning. It also radically redefines for us the nature of another burial pit near the First Emperor’s tomb. The bas-relief’s most prominent features are the bare-chested strong men attending the tripod and the crucible that refines the nebulous breaths into quintessential forms of permanence. If such was the way the living cared for the dead, efforts to this effect must have been made in stage-managing the First Emperor’s death. And if so, there ought to be some traces of them. Indeed, there are.

A bronze tripod (fig. 11) was uncovered in burial pit K9901, southeast of the tomb mound.¹⁹

Pottery vessels have been found in a number of accessory burial pits of the tomb complex, but this is the only bronze vessel discovered on the site. This bronze tripod is now commonly regarded as a ceremonial vessel signifying the emperor’s august status. But the characterization is problematic. Bronze vessels were indeed interred in tombs, in numbers proportional to the tomb occupant’s social status. According to ancient Chinese ritual decorum, the emperor was entitled to a set of nine.²⁰ However, archaeological evidence indicates that officials and aristocrats of lesser status often transgressed the hierarchical rule and had numerous bronze vessels placed in their tombs, in ostentatious acts of pretension to higher status. It would confound logic to think that the First Emperor was entitled to only one. So, if the tripod is not there to fulfill the status-signifying ceremonial function, what is it doing in the pit?

The tripod’s design points us in the right direction. It can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BCE), but it also recalls a Central Plains prototype prevalent in the Warring States period (475–221 BCE). Its owl-faced legs bear a striking resemblance to those of the pottery tripods from the Warring States tombs at Yanxiadu, in the state of Yan (present-day Hebei) (fig. 12).²¹

It is hardly surprising that the state of Yan should enter the picture here. Occult or magical recipe specialists (fangshi) of the Yan and Qi regions were particularly influential advocates of life-prolonging techniques. The First Emperor was evidently rather beholden to their expertise.²² His quest for transcendence was motivated in part by the widely circulating lore of transcendence that the occult specialists of the Yan and Qi perpetuated. Central to their technique was the theory of harnessing breaths as part of macrobiotic therapies. A bronze object from the Yan region (fig. 13) serves as a model for this breath-conjugation process.²³

It is apparently a cosmological model, consisting of a pillar surmounted by a superstructure with four birds—presumably signaling the four directions. A succession of three scenes, one above the other on the column’s shaft, suggests a transformative process structured as an upward aspiration. In the first (lowest) scene, two nebulous serpentine motifs are set against hard-edged geometric patterns; the other two scenes picture a nude figure working on a vessel of some kind. While the precise meaning of these images is unclear, the significance of the progression emerges at the superstructure. There, a kneeling figure attends a legged vessel. This scene occupies the same level as the four branching birds. Farther up, paired facing dragons and birds meet, echoing the serpentine motifs at the base, as if the nebulous breaths have now morphed into distinct shapes signifying exalted transformation in a heavenly state. The tripod apparently plays a key role in transforming the breaths.

The Yan model’s scene of a figure attending a legged vessel is recapitulated in later times. The Han sarcophagus bas-relief of two strong men attempting to raise a tripod is but one example. To see a variation on the same theme from the First Emperor’s tomb site, we need look no further than Pit K9901, which yielded the bronze tripod. The pit contains eleven terracotta male figures with bare torsos, in skirtlike pants (fig. 14).

They are now dubiously identified as acrobats engaged in a sort of variety show to supply the emperor with afterlife entertainment.²⁴ If this is correct, there is an oddity that is hard to explain. Acrobat figurines are typically smaller than life-size. Examples from tombs both before and after the First Emperor’s mausoleum attest to that established convention.²⁵ The terracotta figures from Pit K9901, however, are all life-size. But even allowing for the Qin taste for colossi, we are still hard pressed to explain another peculiarity. Entertainment figures found in ancient tombs are generally shown doing what they are supposed to do: performing acrobatics (body contortions, flips, etc.), dancing, or playing music. That is not the case here; nor do we find any musical instruments, which typically accompany such figures.

Some notable visual facts about these figures have, however, caught the attention of scholars despite their settling for the acrobat identification. For instance, one figure’s taut and bulging belly suggests the summoning up of “abdominal breath” (dantian zhi qi).²⁶ This observation is right on. The figures may well be engaged in breathing exercises just like those in the energy-guiding diagram from Mawangdui Tomb 3 (fig. 15).

Interestingly, some of the figures in the diagram have bare torsos and wear short, skirtlike pants.

Even if they are not practitioners of breathing exercise or “energy-guiding” (daoying), the terracotta figures certainly play a vital part in a transformative alchemical process. To begin with, they look remarkably like their counterparts in the sarcophagus bas-relief (fig. 7), with bare torsos, short pants, and all. Also suggestive is the geometrical design on their skirtlike pants. It is mainly of two kinds, wavy scrolls and angular lozenges (fig. 16),²⁷ precisely the opposition of forms seen on the bronze sedan carriage.

The presence in Pit K9901 of the alchemically significant tripod, with its implied function of transforming and refining the scattered breaths, calls to mind a key passage from the Records of the Grand Historian that pertains to what lies inside the First Emperor’s tomb.

In the ninth month the First Emperor was interred at Mt. Li. When the emperor first came to the throne he began digging and shaping Mt. Li. Later, when he unified the empire, he had over 700,000 men from all over the empire transported to the spot. They dug down to the third layer of underground springs and poured in bronze to make the outer coffin. Replicas of palaces, scenic towers, and the hundred officials, as well as rare utensils and wonderful objects, were brought to fill up the tomb. Craftsmen were ordered to set up crossbows and arrows, rigged so they would immediately shoot down anyone attempting to break in. Mercury [italics mine] was used to fashion imitations of the hundred rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze, and the seas, constructed in such a way that they seemed to flow. Above were representations of all the heavenly bodies, below, the features of the earth. “Man-fish” oil was used for lamps, which were calculated to burn for a long time without going out.²⁸

The grand historian’s mention of mercury is significant. It may be no coincidence that a high level of mercury has been detected at various spots in the First Emperor’s tomb. Mercury and lead are the two key components required for physiognomic and physical alchemy. In the seventeenth-century print cited above (fig. 9), they are represented by the dragon (mercury) and tiger (lead).²⁹ The mercury in the tomb chamber may well function beyond the simulacra of rivers; it may have been deployed as one of the elements indispensable for the conjugation of the yin and yang breaths to achieve the desired “transcendence.” The cosmological model described by the grand historian Sima Qian may well be akin in concept to the bronze pillar from the Yan region.

It is likely that the terracotta strong men in Pit K9901 were there to attend the bronze cauldron from the same pit. Various early texts contain versions of cauldron lore, some involving strong men, others not. Peeling off the narrative overlays, we can see that the cauldron is not necessarily linked to political symbolism. Instead, during Qin and Han times, it was associated more with the quest for transcendence³⁰ and the refinement of dietetic recipes³¹. That cauldron scenes are depicted in Han tombs strongly suggests an iconographic interest in their regenerative overtones. The sarcophagus bas-relief from Luzhou is the most explicit and self-explanatory evidence in this regard. The cauldron pit from the First Emperor’s tomb complex should be viewed in a similar light.

It is well documented that, from the First Emperor’s time on, bronze cauldrons became associated with the practice of alchemy aimed at attaining longevity³². Sima Qian’s account of the molding of the Yellow Emperor’s cauldron says more about the aspiration to transcendence underlying care of the dead in the third and second centuries BCE than about the legendary Yellow Emperor’s time³³.

With all that effort to accommodate the mass of the First Emperor’s scattered breath, what might have happened to it? The emperor gasped his last in the seventh month of 210 BCE at the Ping Terrace of Sand Hill (now Guangzhong County, Hebei), in the former state of Zhao. He was allegedly interred in Mount Li in the ninth month, but the tomb was not sealed until the fourth month of the following year³⁴. There is now a growing revisionist suspicion among modern scholars that the emperor’s body may not have been returned to the capital. The scorching summer heat would have made it impossible for Li Si’s party to preserve the corpse for two or three months on the road. It is not inconceivable that the emperor’s body was secretly buried in the former state of Zhao rather than being carried back to the Qin capital³⁵. Given the early Chinese understanding of the post-mortem condition, care for the scattered breaths, not the body, would have been the more pressing concern: “That the bones and flesh should return again to the earth is what is appointed. But the spirit in its energy can go everywhere; it can go everywhere.”³⁶ There is no way of knowing—before the tomb is opened— whether the emperor’s body was brought back to his mausoleum in Mount Li. At this point, the bronze carriage excavated west of the tomb provides our best clue. It registers a deliberate effort to replicate the all-season sedan carriage which carried the emperor in his last days and held his body after he expired. Inside the carriage are three bronze objects: a container, a folded sheet, and a strap³⁷. The container (fig. 17)—with its realistically modeled string and cover, creased to create the effect of pliable material—has been identified as a bronze replica of a chiyi, a tightly sealed leather pouch used as a wine vessel in ancient China³⁸.

Early sources also record the use of chiyi sacks to contain human remains³⁹. For Li Si’s party, bringing back the First Emperor’s body in a leather sack may have been a practical solution.

It is, however, questionable whether the bronze pouch was intended primarily to document the undignified use of a leather sack to bring back the emperor’s body. The plain and pedestrian sack carried far more symbolic weight in ancient China than our modern perception would credit. Whereas human beings have “seven orifices for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing,” the sack has none.⁴⁰ Its featureless plainness embodies and models “primordiality” (hundun), an embryonic condition that was the original state of existence prior to the birth of the yin and yang breaths and the creation of the universe and varieties of life.⁴¹ Cultivation of this condition was known as the “arts of the Embryonic Age.”⁴² Embodying primordiality, the transcendent “true being” (zhenren) was said to be free of bodily form⁴³ and therefore capable of “entering water without getting wet, entering fire without getting burned, soaring over the clouds and air, and enduring as long as heaven and earth.”⁴⁴ During his life, the First Emperor openly aspired to the status of a “true being.”⁴⁵ Now that he had become indeed a “free spirit” unshackled by a bodily frame, his postmortem condition, consisting in pure breaths, could be conceived as in the undifferentiated “embryonic state.” The leather sack—symbolized by the bronze vessel—best embodied this condition. That the “content” of the carriage is the imaginary breath in “embryonic condition” reinforces the point made earlier. The decorative patterns diagram the optimum condition of the breath. The bronze sack enclosing the “embryonic condition” has further significance. Primordiality is inextricably linked, both linguistically and conceptually, to the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huangdi) and to Mount Kunlun,⁴⁶ the pristine jade-covered magical mountain in the west, a ladder to heaven. King Mu of Zhou (r. 976–922 BCE) allegedly went there in a carriage to catch a glimpse of the residence of the Yellow Emperor, the apotheosis of primordiality, and became rejuvenated.

Such associations bring into focus the distinctiveness of the bronze carriages. The two-carriage set is commonly considered part of the emperor’s afterlife caravan. However, the discovery near the tomb of three other burial pits—called “stable pits” by Chinese archaeologists—strains this theory. The stable pits are located south, southwest, and east of the tomb. They all contain real horses, unlike the west-side pit holding the small bronze carriages. The south-side stable pit has three horses in one wooden compartment. The east-side pits—so far eighty have been found—each have one horse per pit, some of them encased in wooden compartments. All the horses face west. If these horses are indeed, as Chinese archaeologists believe, part of the imperial court caravans serving the emperor, the imperial family, and the imperial court in their afterlife world,⁴⁷ that leaves the bronze carriages decidedly the odd ones out.

A host of significant traits make the bronze carriages distinctive. Each is drawn by four half-size bronze horses painted white. The tunnel containing the bronze carriages is one of a set of five identical tunnels.⁴⁸ A medieval imperial ceremonial guide speaks of the “five imperial carriages,” each keyed to one of the five quarters (east, south, west, north, and center), five colors (green, red, white, black, and yellow), and five seasons (spring, summer, third-month summer, autumn, and winter).⁴⁹

The fivefold division of space applies equally to heaven and earth—the two were strictly correlated⁵⁰. The sky ecliptic was divided into a “central palace” and four other “palaces” that each contained seven “mansions” (groups of stars). The four palaces were each associated with an animal. The Western Palace, which figured as the White Tiger and was exemplified by the constellation Xianchi (also known as the Five Celestial Ponds), served as the garage for the carriages of the Five Gods⁵¹.

Primordiality (hundun), apotheosized as a god figure, was the central deity among the Five Gods in heaven⁵². If the bronze sack in the sedan carriage embodies Primordiality, it signals the projection of the embryonic condition into the terrestrial (or subterranean) imitation of heaven. The bronze horses and carriages were clearly not meant to be used by any afterlife semblance of a real human being in a this-worldly manner. Rather, their reduced size and bronze medium signal their abode in celestial alterity as opposed to terrestrial reality. The First Emperor’s court had a propensity to construct earthly simulacra of heaven. The Xin Palace, built south of the Wei River in 220 BCE, for example, was soon renamed “Apex Temple in imitation of the Heavenly Apex.”⁵³ It is likely that the set of five tunnels in the First Emperor’s tomb—one holding the bronze carriages—is the garage for the Five Gods’ carriages. A Han carving of a god touring the sky in his astral “god’s carriage” (diche) (fig. 18) helps us visualize how the bronze carriage may have played its part⁵⁴.

The heavenly Western Palace is central to this scenario. Amid its seven mansions—Legs, Bond, Stomach, Hairy Head, Net, Turtle Beak, and Three Stars—the Heavenly Street intervenes between the Hairy Head and the Net. It is a numinous dividing line: to its north is the yin realm, to its south the yang realm. The Hairy Head hosts the White Clothing Assembly, in charge of funerary matters⁵⁵. Occult specialists of the time spoke of the west as “the tomb for the spiritual luminescence.”⁵⁶ The white-painted bronze carriage parked near the Heavenly Street is thus richly suggestive. It could mean the crossing of that yin-yang boundary. The decorative patterns on the carriage suggest that the end result had already been diagrammed. Cloudlike forms were to dissolve. The scattered breath was expected to harden into transcendent qualities in the form of pristine lozenge patterns. No matter what the scenario might be, one thing becomes clear: the bronze carriage is not there waiting for the emperor’s figural spirit—there wasn’t any such thing at the time—to sneak out of the tomb chamber and climb into it. The carriage had already arrived at the Heavenly Street, in perfect conformity with the ways of heaven. And in accord with third-century BCE notions about the postmortem condition and with the historical circumstances, the carriage simply remained empty, as it was meant to be, except for a pouch’s worth of breaths in an “embryonic state.”