Kayla Knightley, who played the heroine of the movie "Anna Karenina", may not have been able to kill or imagine that her face shape "imitated" the ancient Chinese ancient Dian dynasty. You look at the shape of their faces, don't you want to be too similar?
Let's not talk about Kayla Knightley, here we talk about the ancient Dian kingdom ladies and the bronze art of the ancient Dian kingdom.
It is said that the "History of Southwest Yilie" records the story of the Chu state zhuang into the Dian as the king in the Warring States period, but the archaeological research in recent years has made some scholars question this: If the Zhuang into the Dian is true, why does the bronze of the ancient Dian state have no traces of the Culture of the Chu State? I think the biggest question is: Why didn't Zhuang Ji bring Chinese characters to the ancient Dian Kingdom? None of the bronzes excavated from the tombs of the ancient Dian Kingdom are written (Zhang Zengqi's paper "The Brilliant Bronze Culture of the Ancient Dian Kingdom in the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River" published in the "Southeast Culture" No. 4, 1994, believes that until the end of the Western Han Dynasty, there were occasional Chinese characters on individual Dian bronzes, such as the "Da Xu Shi, Two Thousand Stones" inscription copper pot; "Li De", "Wang Guang", "Huang Yi" and other seals. It is unclear whether these bronzes were imported from the interior or copied by local ethnic groups, but since they are in the tombs of the Dian Kingdom, it means that the upper echelons of the Dian Kingdom or wizards and the like may know Chinese characters), if Zhuang Ji is true, is he and the tens of thousands of soldiers he brought with him all illiterate?
Yes, the "Biography of the Southwest Yilie" says that Emperor Wu of han gave the King of Dian the "Seal of the King of Dian", which was confirmed by archaeology, and this seal was found in the ancient tomb of Shizhaishan in Jinning County, Kunming City in 1956 (and this seal is very similar to the Seal of the Han Dynasty excavated elsewhere, such as the "Seal of the Empress" of the Han Dynasty found in Xianyang in Shaanxi in 1968, the "Golden Seal of the King of Han Weinu" found in Japan in 1784, and the "Seal of the King of Guangling" found in Yangzhou in 1981), but it is precisely this authenticity, It adds to the suspiciousness of the story.
Legend has it that it is the seal of Lü Hou
Emperor Wu of Han gave the seal of the king of the ancient Dian kingdom
Seal of the "King of Han Weinu" unearthed in Japan
Liu Xu, the fourth son of Emperor Wu of Han, was made the Prince of Guangling
Moreover, the information carried by the ancient artifacts found by archaeology has more functions, not only can logically infer historical facts from them, but also stimulate people's imagination and deduce wonderful life stories and social life conditions. As an ancient tomb group in the ancient Dian Dynasty, Yunnan Jinning Shizhai Mountain, Jiangchuan Lijia Mountain, Chengjiang Jinlian Mountain, and Chenggong Tianzi Temple all have such cultural and creative values. In particular, since the "History" record, the ancient Dian kingdom has mysteriously disappeared from history (Yunnan Satellite TV also filmed a documentary "The Disappeared Ancient Dian Kingdom" in 2013, interested friends can view this film on the CCTV documentary station), so far people have not yet figured out the process and reason for the disappearance of the ancient Dian kingdom, so people should pay more attention to the special value of the bronze culture of the ancient Dian country.
Take, for example, political themes. According to the view of some scholars, the representative work of Li Jiashan bronze art, the three knights statue is based on the history of the nomadic Qiang people in the northern Ganqing region who conquered the indigenous Pu people of the ancient Dian kingdom and became the masters of the ancient Dian kingdom. In the bronze ware of the ancient Dian Kingdom, the copper drum is a common bronze, but archaeology has found that many copper drums have two patterns showing different cultures, one is carved by the Pu people who used the copper drum as a sacrificial heavy tool when casting, and the other is obviously carved after polishing the original pattern. In particular, the copper drums used as shell containers (utensils for storing shells) are cut off from the drum surface, various bronze statues are added as shell lids, and welded to the copper drums. Forced to flee south after being defeated by Qiang Qin, the Qiang people, led by the Three Horsemen, traveled thousands of miles to the ancient Dian kingdom, became the ruler of the ancient Dian country after a brutal war with the indigenous people, and created a splendid culture including bronze art, which is an epic story.
Three Horsemen
For example, in terms of social life, the story of women in the ancient Dian kingdom. According to the study of scholar Li Jinlian, "Looking at the Female Figures in ancient Dian Culture from the Images of Excavated Bronze Figures" (published in Ethnic Art, No. 3, 2003), among the more than 10,000 pieces of ancient Dian bronzes unearthed from 1955 to 1992, only The Shizhaishan bronzes alone can identify as female figures. Among them, some are obviously aristocratic women, who preside over religious ceremonies such as ancestor worship, song and dance, etc., showing their high social status. The ancient Dian people were barefoot, but the noble ladies were richly dressed and pearlescent, many had cosmetics and bronze mirrors, and there were lacquered tombs in Lijiashan and Shizhaishan, and even gold clips for eyebrow extraction. The ladies traveled on the shoulders of four men (mostly square buckets, surrounded by lower railings for their armrests), and on the way, someone would crawl on the ground or bend down to look at it. When the noblewoman was monitoring the spinning and weaving of the female slaves, there would be male slaves holding umbrellas behind them to shade the sun, and in front of them there were female slaves holding plates to eat, and there were whole chickens and ducks on the plates. The residence of the noblewoman when she was alive was a well-decorated and fully functional pole-railing building, and the tomb pit was relatively large after death, and there were many ornaments such as jade bracelets, jade earrings, agate beads, sea shells and other ornaments, and most of them were single burials for men and women, mostly on their backs and straight limbs. Such colorful details can be enjoyed in a variety of art forms, comprehensively reproducing the social style and women's life of gudian.
For example, dance art themes. Many scholars have collected and sorted out the ancient Dian dynasty dance images, among which Guo Jing and Jin Zhong systematically sorted out the images of dance on the bronze ware of the Dian culture and listed 19 images ("National Dance in Yunnan in the Pre-Qin and Han Dynasties", "Yunnan National Dance Collection", page 19, Kunming: Yunnan People's Publishing House, 1990 edition). In 2006, Dr. Wang Ling of Yunnan University collected nearly 30 bronze drums, copper shell vessels, and copper buckles with carved and cast images of music and dance ("Music Iconology and Research on The Images of Ethnic Music in Yunnan", p. 53, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 2009 edition). Peng Xiaoxi, a scholar at Chongqing University, reviewed all the archaeological excavation reports belonging to the Tombs of the Dian culture from 1959 to 2007, and referred to the relevant works and papers of many archaeologists, and selected nearly 60 dance images for analysis and research, believing that "the bronze dance images of the ancient Dian Kingdom fully embody the first glorious period and the era of Ji Dacheng in the history of Yunnan dance, which can be called an extremely precious heritage in the study of the history of Chinese ethnic minorities, and can become the basis for the development of contemporary Yunnan ethnic dance culture." (See Peng Xiaoxi, "Image Collation and Morphological Analysis of Bronze Dance in the Ancient Dian Dynasty", published in Ethnic Art Research, No. 2, 2011.) The author very much agrees with Peng Xiaoxi's view that the dance art heritage in the bronze culture of the ancient Dian Kingdom can provide endless valuable resources and rich nutrition for the creation of today's dance artists.
Ancient Dian dance
The above examples are only a small part of the bronze culture and bronze art of the ancient Dian Kingdom, and talented artists can get unlimited inspiration from them with a little imagination, and create various forms of cultural and creative products and works of art, such as movies, TV series, paintings, sculptures, novels, poetry, music and other works of art. The author once discussed with a painter, and he also believed that it was entirely possible to create a series of paintings of ancient Dian figures, social life scenes, etc. on the basis of the bronze figures of the ancient Dian Kingdom.
And there is much more to be done to develop and utilize this precious heritage with cultural creativity. For example, the location of the ancient Dian state site (such as Jinning Shizhai Mountain, Jiangchuan Lijiashan, etc.), according to the relevant national policies to plan the construction of characteristic towns, with the development of cultural and creative industries as the starting point, vigorously promote the development of related industries, vigorously promote the development of regional culture, carry forward the unique value of ancient Dian civilization, can make new and greater contributions to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. (This article was originally published in the "Unity Daily" on June 3, 2017, originally titled "The Cultural and Creative Value of Lijiashan Bronze Art", and some changes have been made here)