Discover the Intriguing World of Qin Shi Huang: Top 10 Amazing Fun Facts You Never Knew!

1. Mercury Mistake

They say laughter is the best medicine, but sometimes the self-prescribed cure can be worse than the disease: Qin Shi Huang, China's First Emperor, famously gulped down mercury pills in hope of attaining immortality, only to meet his maker a bit more quickly than he had planned.
Source => nationalgeographic.org

2. Game of Thrones-style Book Burning

In a flaming plot twist only a Game of Thrones writer could envy, Qin Shi Huang went full pyromaniac on ancient China's literary scene: As the first emperor to unite China, he ordered the burning of countless books to control thought, promote the legalist philosophy, and quash opposition – only sparing texts on such topics as astrology, agriculture, and his own Qin state's history. The icing on the proverbial cake? Over 460 scholars were buried alive for owning forbidden books, all based on his chancellor, Li Si's masterplan to squash so-called dissent through libel. Interestingly, this book-burning frenzy pushed Confucianism to the forefront in the successive Han Dynasty, and the Qin Dynasty's abrupt downfall was blamed, in part, on this historic bonfire.
Source => historyofinformation.com

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3. Eternal Youth Hide and Seek

Talk about an eternal midlife crisis: Qin Shi Huang once dispatched a sorcerer named Xu Fu to find the secret to eternal youth. Alas, after multiple failed quests, Xu Fu and the entourage of youngsters vanished, presumably settling down in Japan and inadvertently founding an early variant of Hide and Go Seek.
Source => china.org.cn

4. The Confused Confucian Enemy

In an ancient twist of "I dig your poems, but your philosophy school is dead to me," Qin Shi Huang wasn't exactly the poster boy for intellectual freedom: Contrary to popular belief, he did not bury scholars alive for disagreeing with him, but he did order book burnings and suppression of intellectual discourse to promote Legalism. While scholars were indeed executed, they weren't buried alive, and they weren't solely Confucian scholars as that school of thought had not fully formed at the time.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

5. Terracotta Bodyguards

In a case of ancient "bury me with my stuff", but taking it to a whole new level of extra: Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, had thousands of terracotta warriors made, based on Greek art influences, to be eternal bodyguards and accompany him in his tomb.
Source => livescience.com

6. Avengers: Terracotta Edition

Before Marvel's Avengers, Earth's ancient protectors assembled in Terracotta form: Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army not only featured warriors and horses, but also non-military figures like officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians discovered in nearby pits.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

7. Fear Factor: Immortality Edition

Qin Shi Huang's quest for immortality was like a really intense episode of "Fear Factor", but instead of eating bugs, he tried to cheat death itself: This first emperor of China was so obsessed with living forever that he searched for the mythical Mount Penglai and its "tree of deathlessness", even turning to fangshi alchemists who claimed to have the elixir of life recipe – but ironically, there's no proof that ingesting mercury or other toxic substances in these elixirs actually caused his demise.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

8. Real Estate of the Terracotta Kind

Rumor has it that Qin Shi Huang, while not some real-estate hoarder, liked to play with clay: The quirky truth is that his mausoleum holds more than 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses accompanied by an assortment of non-military figures, all meticulously arranged in military formation. Undertaken by 700,000 workers, this afterlife protection plan commenced in 246 BCE, soon after the Emperor ascended the throne!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

9. Elixir Enthusiast Emperor

If Qin Shi Huang had a LinkedIn profile, "elixir enthusiast" might have been one of his endorsements: The First Emperor of China was so fixated on cheating death that he employed a team of alchemists to concoct an immortality potion, ultimately causing his demise from mercury poisoning.
Source => thoughtco.com

10. Underground Mansion Makeover

Talk about an extreme home makeover: Qin Shi Huang didn't settle just for a stylish manor, he constructed a colossal mausoleum complex which took 38 years to build and involved labor from thousands of workers. No ordinary retirement home, this grandiose complex even had underground streams of flowing mercury and was guarded by the now legendary Terracotta Warriors!
Source => study.com