Sunday, August 28, 2011

Terra Cotta Warriors

Last week, I went to ACM to see this Terra Cotta Warriors exhibtion. I have admired these terra cotta warriors since a young age. I just like them so much that I want to have a life size one in my room but my room is really too small to fit.



The exhibition only had like 6 or 7 authentic terra cotta warriors (as they claimed in their booklets). Then there were some replicas and some other artfefacts found in the tombs of some other emperors. Some were quite interesting.

Cute or not? Little porcelain warriors with headphones!

Then I discovered this lady using the laptop....~

See, you can collect little stamps around the exhibit area.

The stamping point!

It was like walking through a maze to get to that exhibition hall but I finally found it!!!


I saw this little tiger decorative item in one of the cases.

It's so cute right! Look at it! It's grinning lor! I never knew that people from the han/qin dynasty got such humour. They made a grinning tiger.

The horse chariots. This is a replica but the real thing is also this size. Qin emperor made all the horses and chariots half the size of the real thing. I am thinking maybe because the whole thing is made of bronze so it will be quite difficult to make a life size one. As you see the chariotis very tighly covered and it actually only had one small window. Qin emperor was a very paranoid emepror. He kept thinking that someone will kill him so he always kept to himself and even his chariot has only a very small window that is seldom opened.

I dunno if you can see, the horse has very fine bronze lines hanging on their chins. These very fine bronze lines of lesser than 1mm or about 1mm in diameter is a sign that the makers of these bronze figures have very good skills as even in modern standard, it is very hard to make such find little lines with bronze.

A little stamp used in the past to confirm an order.

The spears and arrow heads found in the Qin tomb. The components of the crossbows and arrowheads are interchangeable between the crossbows from different states during Qin dynasty. This goes to show that at that time they already had a very standardised way to manufacture these bronze weapons throughout the country! At a time when there are not automated machineries, I find this very impressive. The difference between the arrow heads are at most about 1mm only.

If I can buy one life size terra cotta warrior, I want this one, the general!! First of all because he is the highest ranked among all the warriors found. Secondly, I like his style, I like the way the hair and the hat is done up. Very nice. Did you know that the head and the arms were made separately? And that the warriors are actually hollow inside?

It was found that the warriors are made using the coiling technique, not the mould technique. The coiling way takes so much longer than the mould way so I am wondering really why they want to use the coiling way? I understand that they want individuality but that is only for the face mah. The body still can use mould.

I read before that each terra cotta face is unique. In a documentry I watched not so long ago, a certain agency in the US uses this face recognition program (used by the FBI or something) to scan the faces of the terra cotta warriors to find a perfect match. To their amazement, they didn't find a match among the hundreds of terra cotta warriors scanned.

Each terra cotta warrior was also painted before they were buried but all we can see now is this brownish colour because we do not have the technology to preserve the paint on the warriors. Therefore within minutes after the warriors were unearthed, the paint all fell off. From the examination, they first painted lacquer on the warrior then they pain the colours over the coat of lacquer. Lacquer was a very expensive material in the past and you can imagine the amount of lacquer used in this project was enormous! Qin emperor was the king for only 11 years and he completed all these within 11 years. Fascinating.

We didn't really take a lot of photos of the terra cotta warriors because there were too many tourists and it wasn't really convenient to take pictures.



Don't you think that the terra cotta warriors are very 'sud'? Like very stylo like that. I just love the way they look. They got this aura around them.

Oh man... They really look very nice!!!

And to promote this exhibition, ACM actually find some people to pose at Qin Emperor and his concubine in the museum. LOL..
The qin emperor poser wore a rather nice costume but that concubine was terrible lor with her hair like that!!

As part of the National Day celebration, that day was a free museum day so we actually got to see the exhibition for free. Heng we went early at about 10plus because when we came out at about 12 plus, there was a mega mega long queue! There wasn't only a short queue which took like 10 minutes when I reached there but now the queue has extended from the exhibition hall all the way to the outside of ACM!

Oh that long hair girl here is me lah.. Hahaha.... I just realised KL took a photo of me taking a picture of the queue.

See, ppl queueing outside the museum. I heard that the queue takes about 1.5 hours if you queue outside the building! So I am lucky I got to see it free without queueing..

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

3 More Things

Continuation of my previous blog...

8) I ever visited a cemetary at night with my friends.
Madness, but my friend just asked me to do it again next week! LOL...

9) I look kpo but I actually very bo chup
I look like I am very kpo in everything happening around me but actually I am quite bo chup. I used to be very chup one but after some time I am just tired of all those nonsense so I dun care anymore... as long as it doesn't affect my life then it's none of my business.

10) MD says I don't look like I like Hip hop
My favourite music is Hip Hop.. and Kunqu~ HAhaha... very diverse right... But I dun like to dress kunqu though.. I like to dress hip hop. LOL

Ended~ YH and May Teng said they know all those things I wrote. I mean FEI HUA right... after so many kp sessions at Punggol Park.. I wonder if there is anything I never tell them..

Saturday, August 20, 2011

About Me

Very often people tell me,"You don't look like.... "

You don't look like you like to cycle...

You don't look like you like to read...

ETC and the list goes on..

Nowadays I reply my friends who tell me this that I actually don't look like a lot of things. For people who knew me a long time, they would by now discover a lot of things about me and it won't be surprising anymore when they know some of the things I do. Most of my friends just say that I am weird and Lock says that I am very random.

Actually I am.

Both weird and random.

10 things that I don't look like.

1) I don't look like I am addicted to RPG games.

I get that very often when I told my friends that my favourite kind of game is RPG. Among all the other games like adventure, shooting or those mini games like angry birds (I don't play angry birds at all), my favourite of them all is RPG. I just get so addicted to it that I can play day in day out without eating.

2) I don't look like I want to get diving license.

My friends are kind of surprised to know that I am aiming to get diving license next year. I don't look the sporty type with my round face and round arms and my tummy! LOL... But actually I love snorkelling and my aim is to get diving license next year.

3) I don't look like I like to read encyclopedias.

Actually my favourite books beside horror and mysteries are encyclopedias! LOL... Many people don't know and they will be like,"HUH? How come I know you so long I never know you like to read this??"

That is because u never ask mah... I like reading scientific stuff about animals, space, archeology, Genetics, Evolution, Biology, Time-space etc...

4) I don't look like I like to read comics

Oh yah. I forgot comics.. I only love the japanese manga though. I don't read the ang moh comics. I love manga but I don't have space to store them so I read online nowadays...

5) I don't look like the kind that saves money

To most people, I look like a person who loves to spend money but I actually save money too. LOL...

6) I don't look like the kind that watches movies alone

I enjoy watching movies alone too and I often do that. The first time I told my friend that they were very skeptical because no one around them does that. Actually I also found another friend that watches movies alone and now we sometimes watch together. I always watch alone, shop alone, eat alone. I don't find myself very lonely and in fact I sometimes enjoy it.

7) I don't look like the kind that will act Missy in opera.

Haha, I am too gila and 38 liao that my friends outside my opera circle finds it quite impossible to act demure and innocent on stage. My father always suan me that my stage image is so different and he felt that I am very fake.. Oh well, he sees too much of the real me. May always says that she wants to slap me.. Hahaha~ Neh neh ni boo boo...

Hmmm.. ok what else...... Suddenly can't remember liao.. Well if you guys want to contribute maybe u all can help me contribute lah~ Leave a comment!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Opera Fanatic Blog

Hi friends, for those who have visited my opera blog and found that you can't see it, please do not think it's a bug. :D I have locked it up to prevent further damage done by unscrupulous people who used my blog as a tool to create problems.

I don't write my blog to give me problems. I write it as a record of my own life and also to provide opera information to people. Since no one appreciates and used it for other purposes, I have decided to shut it down. I will announce it in my Mikolah blog when I decide to re-open it. :) Meanwhile, I will still post my opera performances notice here.

When things die down and those 'eat too full nothing to do people' decided not to stir shit then I will re-open my opera blog.

That's all folks!