Mobile menu
photograph of current display in the Grand Vestibule

A display highlighting the interaction between the monarchy and the wider world

Chinese

Kneeling Archer 1986

RCIN 68713

Grand Vestibule, Windsor Castle

State Visits often incorporate tours of sites with particular historic or political significance for the host country. In 1986 The Queen became the first reigning British monarch to visit China when she made a State Visit there with The Duke of Edinburgh. The itinerary included a stop at the Great Wall of China and a State Banquet, at which The Queen wore a pink silk evening dress embroidered with sprays of Tree Peony blossoms, the national flower of China. During The Queen's visit to Xian, she saw thousands of the 'terracotta warriors', which had been buried with China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, in the third century AD. As a token of the visit, Her Majesty was presented with this replica terracotta statue of a kneeling archer.