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Ao Tianzhao: The "Protector" of Ancient Shu State Cultural Relics
Dictation/Zhao Dianzeng
Finishing / Editorial Board of the History of Bashu Koala look
Ao Tianzhao, born in early October 1928, a native of Hexing Town, Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, was the first cultural relics investigator in the history of Guanghan, a famous scholar in Guanghan City, and an expert in cultural relics research and protection. Since joining the work in the early 1950s, he has been struggling in the field of culture and museum for more than 70 years, achieving fruitful results in the protection and research of cultural relics, and has been praised by the industry as "a loyal defender of the protection of the cultural heritage of Guanghan and Han". On December 19, 2020, Mr. Ao Tianzhao passed away at the age of 92 in his home in Guanghan.
In the late 1990s, Zhao Dianzeng and Ao Tianzhao (right) conducted research work at the Sanxingdui Museum (courtesy of Zhao Dianzeng)
Mr. Ao Tianzhao was called "Sanxingdui Protection God" by the local cadres and masses, which is the best affirmation of the hard work of a grassroots cultural relics cadre for decades, and the best praise for the lifelong contribution of this elderly man.
Sanxingdui archaeology is the result of the joint efforts of several generations of archaeologists, such as Ge Weihan and Lin Mingjun before the founding of New China, Feng Hanji, Wang Jiayou, Lin Xiang, Wang Youpeng, Chen De'an, Chen Xiandan, Lei Yu and so on after the founding of New China. Among them, Mr. Ao Tianzhao has made outstanding contributions to the protection and research of Sanxingdui cultural relics.
I have been associated with Mr. Ao Tianzhao for half a lifetime, and I have great admiration for his dedication to Sanxingdui, and this article is my remembrance and tribute to him.
In 1986, Chen De'an held aloft the excavated cultural relics to show the audience (Zhao Dian added a photo)
Tie the knot to Sanxingdui
In the spring of 1929, in Zhongxing Township, Guanghan County, Sichuan Province (now Sanxingdui Town, Guanghan City), farmer Yan Daocheng and his father and son dug a pit to store water in a ditch near their courtyard, and several hoes went down to dig out a pit full of jade (stone) tools. These jade (stone) artifacts are the tip of the iceberg of Sanxingdui cultural relics, and a mysterious ancient Shu relic is also known to the world because of this accidental discovery. And in Hexing Township (present-day Guanghan City and Xing Township), not far from Zhongxing Township, a family surnamed Ao was immersed in the happiness of Xide Takako. A few months ago, in the tenth month of the lunar calendar in 1928, the baby of the Ao family fell to the ground, and he was Ao Tianzhao, an expert in cultural relics research and protection who would accompany Sanxingdui for a lifetime.
At that time, the Ao family was well-off, which not only allowed Ao Tianzhao to spend a happy childhood, but also let him complete middle school in Chengdu. In 1949, after the founding of New China, Ao Tianzhao returned to his hometown as an ordinary middle school substitute teacher. In 1950, he passed the recruitment examination of the Guanghan County Cultural Center and became a librarian.
Zhao Dianzeng (right) and Mr. Lin Xiang (left) meet at the "International Olympic Museum" in Lausanne, Switzerland, in the summer of 1993 (photo courtesy of Zhao Dianzeng)
At that time, the Guanghan County Cultural Center had just been set up, and it had not yet managed the cultural and cultural undertakings. Ao Tianzhao's main work is to be responsible for mass cultural propaganda, including taking photos, showing slides, cultivating grass-roots storytellers, publicizing the spirit, principles and policies of the central government, and displaying the achievements of local study and implementation in Guanghan. At that time, Ao Tianzhao's propaganda work was very popular with the masses, and people gave him a nickname - "Ao Slide". The trajectory of the original "Ao Slide" will continue to operate in a simple and fulfilling work, but a chance in 1973 changed his life.
In 1973, because no local grassroots cadres in Guanghan had systematically studied archaeology, and it coincided with the cultural relics management department holding an archaeology class in the Yangtze River Basin in Hubei, Ao Tianzhao, as a staff member of the county cultural center, was selected to participate in that training in Hubei. The study of archaeology class includes basic learning such as theory, drawing, and surveying, as well as internship and practice at the Safflower Set site in Hubei Province. In this way, Ao Tianzhao became the first cultural relics investigator in Guanghan City, he learned to look at the strata, draw, make shovels, bamboo sticks and brushes, and label every cultural relic unearthed... Through more than a year of systematic study, Ao Tianzhao, who was halfway out of the house, stepped into a new field of cultural relics research and protection.
In one class, Yan Wenming, a famous archaeologist and professor at Peking University, heard that Ao Tianzhao was from Guanghan and said to him: "You should pay attention to it, your Sanxingdui there is very important." Professor Yan's serious expression and serious tone made Ao Tianzhao very shaken. Although sporadic cultural relics have been excavated in the Guanghan area during the Republic of China period, and after the founding of New China, there is a team led by the famous archaeologist Feng Hanji to conduct a large-scale scientific survey of the local area, but the research on Sanxingdui is still in the speculative stage, and the specific situation of the site is not known to outsiders. So even in the archaeology industry, there is little understanding of Sanxingdui, let alone Ao Tianzhao, who has just become a cultural administrator. Although he knew nothing about Sanxingdui at that time, a sense of responsibility for protecting the cultural field of his hometown was born.
It was because of that training that "Sanxingdui" was like a seed sprinkled on Ao Tianzhao's heart, and in the long days that followed, he used his own actions to make this seed take root and sprout. Protecting Sanxingdui cultural relics and recording Sanxingdui cultural relics is the most ordinary but precious journey in Ao Tianzhao's life.
During the 2016 "Symposium to Commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the Excavation of the Sacrifice Pit", Zhao Dianzeng took a group photo with Mr. Xu Jie (left), director of the "Asian Museum" in San Francisco ( left) and Teacher Ao Tianzhao (center) in the Sanxingdui Lecture Hall (courtesy of Zhao Dianzeng)
Conservators and witnesses of cultural relics
Professor Yan's advice, Ao Tian took note of it. In 1975, when my close friend Mr. Lin Xiang of Chuan Da was excavating at the Anning River Archaeological Survey in Liangshan Prefecture, Ao Tianzhao, who returned from his studies in the same year, began to look for the "very important" Sanxingdui. He traveled through the fields and found the courtyard of the Moon Bay Yan family, which was dug up in 1929 with jade (stone) tools, and found the Sanxingdui across the Muma River from The Moon Bay.
At that time, the hot brick factory used Sanxingdui as the three most convenient natural mounds, and continuously took soil to burn bricks. The excavated wasteland was interspersed with broken pottery pieces, which were thrown aside in piles. Ao Tianzhao just arrived there, he carefully inspected the utensils on the ground, because the shape of the utensils was primitive, the heat was not high, and the feel was soft, according to the knowledge he learned in Hubei, he preliminarily judged that the pottery was a relic of the late Neolithic period. Ao Tianzhao was very sad, Sanxingdui, as a relic of the ancient capital, was treated like waste, and some pottery pieces were thrown into the kiln together with the dirt and burned into bricks before they could see the light of day.
Ao Tianzhao felt that if this continued, the brick factory would definitely destroy all the cultural relics in the Sanxingdui site, and he reflected this to the superior leaders, hoping that they would protect these cultural relics as soon as possible. Because there were only more than 10 people in the archaeological team of the Provincial Cultural Relics Management Committee at that time, in addition to rescue and excavation, they also undertook the investigation of large-scale projects such as the Three Gorges and the Second Beach, and they were completely overwhelmed, so the excavation and protection of Sanxingdui was delayed. Ao Tianzhao could not stop the workers from continuing to burn cultural relics, so he ran around Sanxingdui every day, publicizing the protection of cultural relics, collecting abandoned cultural relics at the same time, and starting a person's action of "rescuing" Sanxingdui cultural relics.
In 2018, Zhao Dianzeng and Sanxingdui archaeological leader Chen De'an (left) took a group photo at the home of Ao Tianzhao teacher (middle) (Zhao Dianzeng photo)
At that time, nearby villagers saw Ao Tianzhao riding his pockets and pedaling bicycles, walking around the village, and thought that he was an unemployed homeless person who "begged". But over time, the villagers got used to Ao Tianzhao's presence. This skinny cadre of cultural relics often collects cultural relics from them. Instead of taking money to buy "rags" from villagers, he collected cultural relics from villagers' homes by publicizing cultural relics knowledge and symbolically giving a few cents in rewards. Every time he received a piece, he had to ask for the ins and outs, take a small book to record and number, and take a commemorative photo of the glorious "treasure offering" to the villagers.
After familiarizing themselves, the villagers began to take the initiative to cooperate with Ao Tianzhao's work. At that time, some villagers reported that a few years ago, someone had dug a pit of beautifully colored "pebbles" and scattered them in various homes for children to play with. He ran to see that it was obviously polished grinding stones, so he went door to door and finally received more than a dozen cultural relics handed in by the villagers. Another aunt told him that there was a sharpened stone piece from the soil in the house, and when Ao Tianzhao looked at her house, he found that it was a stone axe more than ten centimeters long. What is more exaggerated is the 3 large jade stones on the side of the Duck River Ditch, the largest one is green jade, weighing more than a ton, and children at that time liked to sit on it and bathe. These 3 large pieces of jade are not known where they were transported from, but there are many chisel marks on them, and Ao Tianzhao speculates that it should be the jade that the Sanxingdui people are preparing to cut and grind into utensils.
In this way, Ao Tianzhao single-handedly collected more than 200 pieces of various jades, stone tools, pottery, bronzes, etc. from the wasteland of the brick factory in the ruins area and the hands of villagers, leaving behind a batch of precious cultural relics and materials, making great contributions to the protection of Sanxingdui cultural relics.
In the summer of 2019, Zhao Dianzeng and Liu Zhangze , director of the Deyang Archaeological Research Institute (left), take a group photo at the home of Ao Tianzhao teacher (center) (courtesy of Zhao Dianzeng)
Ao Tianzhao's rescue operation lasted until 1980.
In April 1980, Fan Guijie and four others went to Peng County to retrieve a batch of bronzes that had just been excavated from the Western Zhou Cellar, including two large bronze tablets that were later designated as "national treasures" or "first-class cultural relics". In addition to being happy, everyone decided to stop by the Guanghan Moon Bay ruins to see. In the afternoon, rushing to Sanxingdui, in the section of the brick factory to take soil, found hundreds of meters of black cultural layers, and collected more than 300 specimens. After the report the next day, the unit decided to organize an official excavation immediately. A total of six excavations were carried out in the following six years, but the most well-known was the sixth excavation in 1986.
At the beginning of that year, Mr. Lin Xiang came to me to contact the archaeology class students for internship, hoping that the location would be in Sanxingdui. We were understaffed, and an archaeology internship course of more than 30 people was established. By the end of June, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and provincial, municipal and county leaders came to the scene together, affirmed the excavation results, and decided to stop the brick factory. In July and August, when the brick factory took soil under the control of the archaeological team to fill the kiln, it found the No. 1 and No. 2 sacrifice pits, and we immediately carried out formal excavations, which shocked the world at once, and the Sanxingdui site was fully protected.
In the summer of 1986, Zhao Dianzeng (third from right) took a group photo with Teacher Ao Tianzhao (second from right), Professor Lin Xiang of Sichuan University (fifth from right), and Zhu Zhangyi ( first from right, director of the Cash Sand Museum) of the Archaeology Class of Sichuan University
In the years of excavation of the No. 1 and No. 2 sacrifice pits, Ao Tianzhao not only organized migrant workers to assist in excavations, gathered personnel to defend logistics, and received leaders to do a good job of publicity, but also used the camera in his hand to take a large number of on-site excavation photos, leaving extremely precious first-hand information, including Chen De'an holding aloft the first unearthed bronze human head to show the audience, which has become a representative work of Sanxingdui archaeological discoveries.
The excavations of 1986 had a huge impact. The legendary ancient Shu state has been proved to exist, and is an uninterrupted, self-contained civilization system, and has extensive exchanges with the Central Plains culture; it shows that Chinese civilization did not only originate in the Yellow River Basin, but was a multi-point converged civilization form. As a witness to this archaeological discovery, Ao Tianzhao's photos record this important historical moment. Most of these photographs are included in the Sanxingdui Atlas.
"Sanxingdui Tuzhi" is an example of Mr. Ao Tianzhao's silent dedication. Although Ao Tianzhao is only an editorial board member and deputy editor-in-chief, he actually undertakes the main tasks of editing the plan, cleaning up and providing pictures of cultural relics, and writing most of the text. In those two or three years, he frequently traveled back and forth between Guanghan and Chengdu, regardless of fame and fortune, and made the greatest contribution to the publication of this tuzhi.
Yu Chun on display at Sanxingdui Museum (Courtesy of Yun He Visual)
Never change the heart of a child for life
After retirement, Ao Tianzhao was not idle, and he still did the investigation, protection and management of the Sanxingdui site. His life's efforts have won the trust and support of the local people, and nearby villagers will still take the initiative to provide him with clues to cultural relics, so that where there are any cultural relics found and what cultural relics have appeared, he has done a good job of collecting records one step ahead of others, and he has collected thousands of cultural relics over the years. From 2004 to 2006, he organized and studied the cultural relics collected in detail, and after writing and publishing the "Sanxingdui Research, Fourth Series, Collection Volume", which is a very important research material in addition to the excavation report.
At the same time, in order to leave images for many monuments, he led the young people of the Cultural Management Institute to shoot and archive 11 cultural relics and monuments in Guanghan, and made a 46-minute documentary "Guanghan Monuments", and personally served as an interpreter to explain the historical monuments of Guanghan to the audience. In order to save the Nanhua Palace, which is facing demolition due to urban transformation, he ran a call, wrote a petition, and carried the great work of protecting cultural relics with his thin body.
Although he saved a large number of valuable and precious cultural relics, he has been living in an old two-bedroom apartment in the dormitory of the Cultural Center, and he has also nailed his own bookshelf. In the small space of the study and bedroom, he wrote more than 700,000 words of research works such as "Revisiting the Origin of Sanxingdui ShuDu" and "The Discovery of Pu Jade, Seed Jade, and Large Jade at the Sanxingdui Ruins and Discussion on Related Problems".
Sanxingdui Jade Beads (Courtesy of Sanxingdui Museum); Sanxingdui Jade Axe (Courtesy of Sanxingdui Museum)
Due to his older retirement, Ao Tianzhao was neither rated as a senior professional title nor participated in any foreign visits. In various activities such as exhibition, exhibition, reception, publicity and other activities of sanxingdui museum, he has been doing his best to assist, including explaining the site ruins and providing detailed information. He dedicated his life's enthusiasm to Sanxingdui cultural relics, and his work was unanimously praised, known as sanxingdui's "living dictionary". Mr. Guo Lezhi, a famous German sinologist, once said emotionally: "The map of Sanxingdui in Teacher Ao's hand, which is densely packed with decades of discoveries, is already an important cultural relic in itself. ”
In 2018, I and Chen De'an, the leader of the Sanxingdui archaeology team, visited the home of Ao Tianzhao teacher, he was full of energy and his eyes were like a torch, and we discussed the publication of his manuscript, "Ao Tianzhao Cultural Relics and Archaeological Anthology", thinking of preserving these very valuable contents and leaving them for a new generation of cultural conservators. That time, we had a great conversation. In the summer of 2019, I went to Mr. Ao's home with Liu Zhangze, director of the Deyang Archaeological Research Institute, to see him, and the old man was kind and kind,000, and still insisted on the collation of documents every day.
In December 2019, the Sichuan Provincial Archaeological Team detected 6 similar artifact pits within 30 meters between the No. 1 and No. 2 sacrifice pits, but before they could be excavated, Ao Tianzhao, who had long been accompanied by Sanxingdui, had already driven to the west. A few days before his death, he was still sorting out the literature related to Sanxingdui, and took the notes he had sorted out, and went to the printing shop near his home as usual to print them.
Although Ao Tianzhao was never able to see the excavation of the No. 3-8 sacrifice pit, his spirit of loving and protecting cultural relics has always inspired future generations. Without his efforts, Sanxingdui cultural relics may have been devastated in the 1970s and 1980s, let alone ushered in today's revival. Ao Tianzhao's perseverance, consistency, learning from the old, and achieving the old professionalism continue to touch all those who run for the "Sanxingdui". Although it is difficult to describe Ao Tianzhao's glorious deeds in detail in this article, the noble qualities of his body can be seen. This cultural relics worker, who was called the "protection god" by the people near Sanxingdui, left his love for Sanxingdui cultural relics in the human world forever.
Ao Tianzhao's photo before his death (Photo by Cai Xiaochuan, courtesy of Sanxingdui Museum)