China's Lost Pyramids

No tagline for this movie

In China, there exists an astonishing place. A burial ground to rival Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, where pyramid tombs of stupendous size are full of astonishing riches. In 221 BC, China's first Emperor united warring kingdoms into a nation that still exists today. To memorialise this achievement, he bankrupted the national treasury and oppressed thousands of workers to build one of the world’s biggest mortuary complexes. China's second dynasty, the Han, inherited the daunting challenge of building larger tombs to command respect and establish their right to rule without running the nation into the ground. Although no Han emperor's tomb has been opened, the tombs of lesser Han aristocrats have revealed astonishing things: complete underground palaces (including kitchens and toilets) and at least one corpse so amazingly well-preserved some believe Han tomb-builders knew how to "engineer immortality".

Documentary

You Might Also Like

  • The Rise & Fall of Penn Station
  • Planet Food: Spice Trails
  • 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama
  • Handbook of Movie Theaters' History
  • When We Were Kings
  • Adolphe Appia Visionary of Invisible
  • Maineland
  • Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike
  • Theory and Practice: Conversations with Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn
  • Crocodile in the Yangtze
  • The 50 Year Argument
  • Waiting for the Sun
  • Franz Kafka's 'The Trial'
  • Raphael: The Lord of the Arts
  • Not Quite Hollywood
  • Led Zeppelin Played Here
  • The Polio Crusade
  • I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
  • State Funeral