Feb 20, 2018
China will send two experts to the United States to repair a terracotta warrior statue damaged by an amateur art thief, state media reports.
The statue was damaged when 24-year-old American Michael Rohana allegedly broke a thumb off the 2200-year-old statue as a souvenir while attending a party at the Franklin Institute in Pennsylvania, according to US media.
Rohana was charged with theft and concealment of a major artwork, and later released on bail.
The Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre, which loaned the statues, will send experts to reattach the missing digit, the Xinhua news agency reported.
A representative of the cultural centre told the Beijing Youth Daily that it “strongly condemned” the theft.
The statue was one of thousands of life-size terracotta warriors unearthed from the mausoleum to the first Qin emperor who unified China and died in 210 BCE, according to UNESCO.
The mausoleum in Xi’an is a World Heritage site although China regularly loans statues to overseas museums.
