Shaanxi Qianling Museum
Sixty-one headless stone envoys and a deliberately blank imperial stele mark a Tang burial ground.
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About this audio guide
At the Shaanxi Qianling Museum outside Xi'an, this guide counts sixty-one stone envoys lining a hillside approach, every one broken off flat at the collarbone, and follows why Empress Wu Zetian raised them after her husband Emperor Gaozong's death to stand in for real ambassadors of Tang tributary states. It weighs two competing explanations for the missing heads, an earthquake and a story of descendants settling an old grudge, before reaching Wu Zetian's own memorial slab nearby, left deliberately blank. Inside the museum, a princess's grave goods wait to keep her company in death.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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