China's ancient monuments get a 50-minute survey built around three sites: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the buried army of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. The film follows historians and archaeologists through the sections of wall built and rebuilt over centuries by successive dynasties, into the Forbidden City's courtyards and halls where Ming and Qing emperors ruled in near-total seclusion, and down among the excavated ranks of terracotta soldiers near Xi'an, each face reportedly individually sculpted. Footage of ongoing excavation work sits alongside historical explanation of why these projects were built and what they cost to construct, from forced labor on the wall to the scale of the tomb complex still only partly excavated. Presented in the History Hit style, with expert interviews carrying most of the narrative and location filming doing the rest, the film works as a broad introduction to how these three monuments reflect the ambitions of the emperors who ordered them built.