Qin Shi Huang Quotes

The Emperor Who Never Found Immortality

Qin Shi Huang spent his final years obsessed with finding the elixir of immortality. He sent expeditions across the sea to search for the mythical islands of the immortals. Court alchemists fed him mercury pills they claimed would extend his life. The mercury poisoned him. He died on September 10, 210 BC, during an inspection tour, at age forty-nine. The eunuch Zhao Gao and chancellor Li Si forged his will, ordering his eldest son Fusu to commit suicide and placing his younger, weaker son on the throne. The Qin dynasty collapsed four years later. But the empire he built, the unified China, the standardized writing, the connected walls, survived for two thousand years. His terracotta army of over 8,000 warriors, discovered in 1974, still guards his tomb.