The Palace Museum's first large-scale exhibition "Why China" at the beginning of the year exhibited more than 130 cultural relics from the upper stone age to the Qing Dynasty, covering stone tools, ceramics, jade, bronze, gold and silver, calligraphy and painting, including He Zun, Changxin Palace lamp, Tibetan "Four Medical Classics" and other well-known national treasures, in order to show why the land of China is China and why Chinese civilization is immortal.
(Warring States - Han Dynasty) Niu Hu Copper Case
Five stars out of the East to benefit China
He Zun, a first-class cultural relic placed in the center of the "Why China" exhibition hall of the Palace Museum, is the undisputed protagonist of this special exhibition. This bronze statue cast in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty excavated in 1963 in Jiacun Town, Baoji County, with a round mouth and a square body, reflects the understanding of the surrounding world in the early days under the influence of Chinese civilization with a "heavenly circle place" shape.
(Western Zhou) He Zun
This sacrificial vessel, made by a nobleman named He, weighs 14.6 kilograms and is awe-inspiring with four hollowed-out large doors throughout. The whole is based on a thunder pattern, and the abdomen and hoop feet are decorated with high-relief curled horns. The most crucial point is that the inner sole is cast with 12 lines of inscriptions, totaling 122 words, describing a series of activities in which the Zhou Chengwang camp was built and sacrifices were held. Among them, the first four words of the seventh line, "Zhaozi China", are the earliest known word for "China". He Zun's status thus jumped to one of the most well-known bronzes.
Unearthed at the Niya site in Minfeng County, Xinjiang, the Han Dynasty "Five Stars Out of the East and Li China" brocade armband is a delicate fabric of five-fold plain brocade with colorful colors, representing the highest level of Han brocade. The tapestry corresponds to the "five stars" with the five colors of "green, red, yellow, white and green", and the "five elements of yin and yang" are vividly expressed. "Dongfang" is a specific celestial dome location in ancient Chinese astrology, while the so-called "China" refers to the Gyeonggi region and the Central Plains in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, which is a geographical concept. In other words, "five stars out of the East to benefit China" is an astrology. In the Book of History and Heavenly Officials, there is: "Among the five stars and heavens, they are accumulated in the East, and The Chinese are profitable; in the West, the foreign soldiers are profitable." The five stars are gathered together from the stars, and the country they give up can be brought to the world. "As Si said, with the wisdom of the ancients prophesied, coupled with the struggle of the people at present, we should truly realize the prosperity of the people and the strength of the country!"
(Han Dynasty) "Five Stars Out of the East and Benefiting China" JinGuro (replica)
Dragon and Tiger Spirit
Chinese see himself as a descendant of the dragon. More than 7,000 years ago, the ancestors began to worship the primitive dragon. From one of the most attractive exhibits in the first unit of this exhibition, "Source", "Hongshan Jade Dragon", to the last exhibit, the rosewood box containing the jade book "Wenyuan Pavilion Record" written by the Qianlong Emperor, is decorated with golden dragons, which shows the Chinese people's dedication to dragons.
Records of dragons date back to prehistoric civilizations. In 1987, the Henan archaeological team excavated a Yangshao cultural site in the west slope of Puyang, and the owner of the tomb number M45 used mussel shells to pose the pattern of dragon and tiger, which was corrected by carbon-14 and tree wheels, and the age was around 4000 BC. This is the earliest known pattern of the dragon and tiger. The image of the dragon is also found in the faience ornamentation of the same period. Entering the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the great development of bronze provided a vast carrier for the image of the dragon. Unearthed in The small Keding village of Famen Temple in Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province, the shape is thick, majestic, and the ornamentation is diverse, and the two sides of the ear are decorated with relative dragon patterns.
The image of the dragon also appears in the jade culture. Chinese has a long history of jade treatment, and as early as the Neolithic Age, it produced a prehistoric culture with superb jade craftsmanship such as Hongshan, Liangzhu, Qijia and Shijiahe. A Neolithic jade dragon in the Palace Museum's collection is the largest of its kind seen so far. This artifact should be an important tool for prehistoric shamans to communicate with the gods, reflecting the ideas and concepts of the ancestors, and is the product of the development of prehistoric religious sacrifices to a certain height. The jade of the Southern Liangzhu culture is considered to be a ritual vessel for sacrificing the earth. The inner wall is round, representing the heavens; the outer outline is square, representing the earth. Through-holes represent communication between heaven and earth. Paired with this is Yubi, which is specially designed for worship of the gods. These two most ancient forms of jade vividly illustrate the primitive ancestors' understanding of heaven and earth.
In the Han Dynasty, the "four elephants" were used to represent the four directions of east, west, south and north. People are convinced that the "four elephants" are closely related to all things in heaven and earth, yin and yang, and have the divine power to protect the four directions. People often use the "four gods" motifs representing the Eastern Green Dragon, the Western White Tiger, the Southern Suzaku, and the Northern Xuanwu as circular architectural component ornament tiles covering the front end of the roof tiles. Among them, the green dragon is recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" as "there is a sentence in the east, a bird with a human face, and two dragons by the multiplying". Since then, the image of the dragon has gradually become a symbol of the supreme position of power.
Along with the mysterious image of the dragon, the Chinese of the pre-Qin period also gave the tiger a rich connotation. During the Warring States period, the soldier symbol of the State of Qi, the Tiger Symbol of the Great Master, should be a Crouching Tiger shape composed of two halves, and the right half of the existing part. The tiger-shaped tail has a perforation on the tail, two concaves on the back, and two lines of 11 characters on the front of the inscription, which serve as the letter of the doctor. The two halves of the Tiger Rune, half in the imperial court and half in the place. When sending troops, the emissaries of the imperial court held the symbol to the locality, and the two halves were in harmony, so that the local government could obey the orders. In the Yuan Dynasty, the Bashi Ba Wen Tiger Rune Round Plate was made of iron, and both sides were decorated with bas-relief fu tiger stripes. The tiger's face is facing forward, its hair is soaring, and there seems to be a total of three jewels on its forehead, two or two, and its front paws are held on the chest, and the tiger's body is invisible. The iron plate is inlaid on both sides with raised five lines of Bashiba, the characters are silver, and the font is dignified and regular. Its form and textual content reflect the historical facts of the establishment of a unified multi-ethnic state by the Yuan Dynasty.
Farming is passed down from generation to generation
Faith is the refraction of spiritual power, and the earth under your feet is the material foundation that never stops. The grinding discs, grinding rods from the Henan Museum and the rattan bone rakes collected by the Zhejiang Museum, together with stone sickles and stone axes, undoubtedly best illustrate the important role of the basic production tools of ancient Chinese society. Relying on the rich products of the Chinese land, the Chinese nation has carried out the production practice of farming and weaving, and fishing, woodwork, ploughing, weaving and reading constitute the basic production and life form of Traditional Chinese Farming Society, and have also become the best embodiment of the way of life and life ideals in traditional Chinese culture.
The "Shendetang" pastel weaving picture bowl fired during the light years of the Qing Dynasty is painted with the pattern of "male cultivator and female weaving", showing Chinese praise for the plain and simple life. There is also a Qing Dynasty jasper carved fishing tree to cultivate the reading pen holder, and the shepherd boy walks through the mountains and looks back at the woodcutters who come down the mountain. For more than 2,000 years, Chinese has established a relatively self-sufficient and interwoven economic and social structure around the farming economy, nourishing the ideological concepts of towering heavenly Dharma, respecting ancestors and benefiting the people, and advocating virtue and etiquette. On this basis, ritual and philosophical ideas and sects were born. The Han Dynasty portrait stone "Confucius Sees Laozi" from the Shandong Museum shows the profound influence of the two sages on the thinking and life of Chinese.
In 221 BC, the Qin emperor Yingzheng "Yu Lie of the Sixth Dynasty" finally achieved the first unification of the land of China. After ascending the throne, Qin Shi Huang promulgated a series of reform edicts based on the Qin system throughout the country, "the same track, the same book and the same text", the unification of currency and weights and measures, the promulgation of unified laws, the implementation of the county system, etc., prompting China not only to achieve the complete unification of land territory for the first time, but also to achieve true return in many aspects such as economy, culture, military, and law. The Shang Martingale Fangsheng from the Shanghai Museum and the currencies of various countries during the Warring States period reflect the advanced economy and national governance in the process of the unification of the Six Kingdoms by the Qin State.
Made in the 62nd year of Qianlong (1797), the Jin Ou Yonggu Cup is among the best in the history of Chinese treasure making in terms of its complexity of processes, exquisite craftsmanship and wide range of artificial use. Because of this, it can be called the treasure of the Qing Dynasty. It symbolizes the solid territory and the evergreen foundation, just like no matter how vicissitudes and changes, Chinese civilization will always maintain vigorous vitality.
(Qing) Jin Ou Yonggu Cup