A new technological method has been developed to keep the original paint on the famous terracotta warriors statues from fading, flaking and chipping after being unearthed.

The introduction of this breakthrough was made recently in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province.

The tarnishing and flaking off of the paint on coloured terracotta warriors is a problem that has tormented cultural relics experts from around the world ever since the warriors were discovered in the mausoleum of Emperor Qinshihuang of Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC) in Shaanxi 25 years ago.

These terracotta warriors used to get tarnished soon after being unearthed and the paint on their faces and bodies started to crease and flake off, although numerous attempts have been made over the past decades.

This obstacle prevented archaeologists from continuing the large-scale excavation of these sleeping warriors, which were buried as guards to accompany the first emperor in China's history.

Experts from China and Germany jointly developed two new paint-protection technologies after years of research and applied them on newly excavated coloured terracotta warriors for the first time one month ago.

"Based on our observation in the past month, the paint on the terracotta warriors has been basically kept as fresh as they were immediately unearthed with these new technologies," said Zhou Tie, chief Chinese expert of the co-operation between China and Germany. "So far, it is safe to say that these methods do work quite well."

The two approaches, known as PEG200 and HEMA, are now extensively applied on the newly unearthed coloured terracotta warriors, thus paving the way for further excavations, Zhou revealed.

The new approach will be applied on the over 8,000 terracotta warriors unearthed, Zhou said. "We will watch closely the effect of these approaches and optimize them step by step in the future," he added. "We are substantially optimistic about their prospect."