That a Chinese entrepreneur should want to build a museum of this sort is no more unusual than the proliferation of thematic wax museums all over the world; what is surprising is that the context this entrepreneur provided for Qin Shihuang's stunning political and cultural achievements is the classical West. At this point in the 21st century, there is such ambivalence about the past that the context for Chinese nationalist pride can not be an exclusively or even primarily Chinese narrative, but must be placed in a global frame of reference showing China as the equal of the West and western civilization.