--- title: China: the First Emperor, the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «China: the First Emperor, the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Mei says the First Emperor was the greatest ruler ever; the teacher says he was a tyrant. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / China: the First Emperor, the Terracot… # China: the First Emperor, the Terracotta Army and the Great Wall Lesson 52 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 21 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/0/) — Mei says the First Emperor was the greatest ruler ever; the teacher says he was a tyrant. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/1/) — In 221 BC Qin Shi Huang united China and made writing, coins, weights and even the width of cart axles the same everywhere, but he also used forced labour, burned books and punished harshly. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/2/) — He was both a unifier and a tyrant. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/3/) — In 1974 farmers digging a well near Xi'an hit clay: they had found the Terracotta Army, thousands of life-size soldiers guarding his tomb, each face different. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/4/) — The tomb itself is still closed, to protect it. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/5/) — Mei also says the Great Wall is one wall you can see from space. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/6/) — Imagine a hair stretched across a football pitch: very long, too thin to see from far away. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/7/) — The Wall is many walls from many dynasties, and even China's astronaut Yang Liwei said he could not see it from orbit. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/8/) — After the Qin came the Han, a dynasty so important that most Chinese people still call themselves Han; they chose officials by exams, sent the traveller Zhang Qian west, and improved paper. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/9/) — Qin Shi Huang united China in 221 BC and standardised writing, coins, weights and the width of cart axles, and built roads. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/10/) — The First Emperor was also very harsh: forced labour, the burning of books and cruel punishments are recorded, and his dynasty fell soon after he died. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/11/) — The Terracotta Army near Xi'an was found in 1974 by farmers digging a well; its thousands of life-size clay soldiers have different faces and hairstyles, made from shared moulds with details added by hand. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/12/) — The historian Sima Qian wrote that the emperor's tomb has rivers of mercury, a poisonous liquid metal; soil tests show high mercury levels, and archaeologists have not opened the main tomb, mainly to protect it. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/13/) — The Great Wall is very long but only a few metres wide, and astronauts, including China's Yang Liwei in 2003, said they could not see it with the naked eye (without a telescope) from orbit. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/14/) — A 2012 Chinese survey counted all the wall sections from different dynasties at about 21,196 km; most of the stone wall seen in photos was built under the Ming. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/15/) — The walls helped control borders and trade, but enemies did get past: the Mongols conquered China, and the Manchus, a people from the north-east, came through the Shanhaiguan pass, a gateway in the Wall, in 1644. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/16/) — The legend of Meng Jiangnu tells of a wife whose husband died building the wall, and whose weeping brought a section down; it shows how much the builders suffered. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/17/) — The Han dynasty, 206 BC–220 AD, was so important that the majority people of China call themselves Han, and Chinese characters are «Han characters»; China also has 55 officially recognised minorities. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/18/) — China's imperial exams, begun in early form under the Han and Sui and fully developed under the Tang and Song, chose officials by tests of learning, not by birth, until 1905, and they influenced Western civil service exams (tests for government office jobs). - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/19/) — Zhang Qian travelled west for the Han emperor around 138–126 BC, was held prisoner by the Xiongnu, horsemen of the northern steppe, for about ten years, and brought back knowledge of Central Asia that helped open the Silk Road; that was more than 1,300 years before the Italian Marco Polo travelled east to China. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/52-china-the-first-emperor-the-terracotta-army-and-the-great-wall/20/) — Tradition says Cai Lun invented paper in 105 AD, but older Chinese paper from about 200 BC has been found, so he improved it rather than invented it. - ← previous: [China: five thousand years and the oldest dynasties](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/51-china-five-thousand-years-the-oldest-dynasties/) - next →: [China: the four great inventions](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/53-china-the-four-great-inventions/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)