In the lobby of the Shanghai Museum, a set of 66 pieces of Ming Dynasty colorful glazed instrument warrior pottery welcomed two "deceased people" who had been separated from China for a hundred years – they met here to show visitors the scenes of Ming Dynasty life.
At the last special exhibition of the Shanghai Museum in 2021, "Thousands of Images - Special Exhibition of Colorful Glazed Pottery Figurines of the Ming Dynasty", which officially opened today, the two groups of cultural relics are inextricably linked, and also witness the people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States in the past century.
In 1983, to celebrate the sistership between Shanghai and San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco hosted the "Shanghai Museum Collection – An Exhibition of 6,000 Years of Chinese Art", in which a set of honor guard figurines impressed local audience members Suzanne Fratus.
Suzanne's home also has a similar pair of terracotta figurines. Her grandfather, Dr. John Herbert Waite, who practiced medicine in China in the early 20th century, gave him two figurines as a token of gratitude after a patient was cured, and then her grandfather returned to the United States with the pair. The story she had told as a child from her grandfather had remained in Suzanne's mind, and she had never imagined that many years later she would see similar clay figurines in an exhibition of ancient Chinese art in San Francisco.
A pair of clay figurines that "returned"
Nearly 40 years have passed. Recently, Suzanne contacted the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco and expressed her hope to donate the two figurines to the Shanghai Museum so that they can return to their hometown and return to the hands of the Chinese. "In the 100 years that have separated The two figurines from Chinese land, they have witnessed two world wars, countless epidemics, floods and famines," she said. If they could speak, I know they want to tell the world a lot of things: be kind to people, respect each other, help each other. They return home, not because of money or politics, but because of the power of love and respect for Chinese people. ”
This year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage designated the Shanghai Museum to accept donations. Recently, with the support of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Cultural Heritage, the Shanghai Museum completed the donation process of two repatriated cultural relics and restored them, and will also hold an online donation ceremony through overseas connections in the near future.
The Shanghai Museum houses pottery from the Honor Guard
The set of honor guard pottery that attracted Susanna's attention at that time totaled 66 pieces, and the armored riding samurai opened the way, followed by the drummer, followed by the riding scribe figurine and the musical figurine, and the eight large sedans carried by the palanquins behind were used by the tomb owner. Numerous clay figurines are clustered with small cars and chairs, and finally there are large beds, cages, screens, candlesticks and other living utensils. This is a set of important physical materials for the study of the ancient Chinese burial system and the history of pottery making. Experts deduce that this set of pottery ceremonial warriors should have been fired before the late fifteenth century.
The pair of terracotta figurines donated by Suzanne is very similar to the soap figurines in the honor guard. The main duties of the soap are to accompany officials on patrols, serve for interrogation, torture prisoners, etc., and the soap warriors are generally not arranged separately, but are scattered among the honor guards.
The pottery figurines and soap figurines returned this time
The custom of accompanying the burial of the character honor guard team has begun from the pre-Qin, and the most familiar ones are the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang and the Tang Sancai Figurines. In the Ming Dynasty, a miniature version of the funeral honor guard was more popular. Archaeological excavations have often seen a combination of colorful glazed pottery figurines, mostly unearthed in the tombs of clan kings and high-ranking officials, that is, the so-called "ritual of seeing life", that is, to let the deceased continue to enjoy the life before they died.
Although this set of honor guards has never been publicly exhibited in the exhibition hall of Shangbo before, it has been exchanged abroad many times. In addition to the exhibitions in San Francisco, Chicago, Houston and Washington, D.C. from 1983 to 1984, he participated in the "1492 World Heritage Exhibition" at the World Expo in Seville, Spain, and exhibited at the Kremlin Museum in Moscow, Russia in 2018.
Yang Zhigang, director of the Shanghai Museum, said that this year has experienced various obstacles from the epidemic, and it is of special significance to welcome the return of these two clay figurines at the time of retiring the old and welcoming the new. "I hope that this period of fate, which takes cultural relics as a link and art as a bridge, will once again shorten the vast Pacific Ocean into a stream that can be crossed."
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Jian Gongbo
Source: Author: Jian Gongbo