We can always get a sense of certainty and aesthetic pleasure in books related to archaeology and art history. The relics of those that have been carefully excavated by generations of predecessors in the thick soil of time and have been repeatedly verified are engraved with our distant past and reflect the natural greatness given by history. As a heavy entity, they are more imaginative than any kind of imaginary imagination, it has traveled thousands of sails, it is full of puzzles, when we finally look at it across perhaps only a thin air, and between us, countless times flow like thousands of horses.
In the following books, researchers and the silent but containing historical relics of thousands of weather sneak into the same time and space, green lights and yellow scrolls, they painstakingly hooked, hoping to tell the shore waiting for them, about the secrets of time.
Wang Jiqian and Xu Xiaohu's "Painting Quotations" was published in February 2022
The newest edition of "Painting Quotations: Listening to Wang Jiqian talk about the brush and ink of Chinese painting and calligraphy" was recently launched by the Republic of China, the whole book is in the form of "dialogue", the words are repeated, Wang Jiqian completed the words and deeds of mysterious Chinese painting, and this is also an important demonstration of Wang Jiqian's Chinese painting that has always paid attention to the understanding and knows why it is so.
The dialogue in Pictorial Quotations takes place between 1971 and 1978. Its greatest value is reflected in the following points, first of all, Wang Jiqian's rare demonstration, that is, before learning to appreciate and taste, he must practice it himself, Wang Jiqian said that "learning pen and ink is the only way out (appreciation)". When discussing 187 works by 68 writers and painters from the Jin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, and sharing their representative techniques, Wang Jiqian patiently demonstrated to Xu Xiaohu one by one.
For example, when talking about the Northern Song Dynasty's Fan Kuan's most famous "raindrops", Wang Jiqian detailed this method, "Every stroke looks like a rapid rain hitting the wall." First, he dragged out the outlined lines with a pen. The second is his method, which he draws with the tip of a pen. On the other hand, these wrinkles are not rigid, vertical lines like needles. Remember, you can't use too many dry pens on silk, because silk is not like paper with hairy fibers, which can create a flying white effect. In the following demonstration relief, Wang Jiqian also talked about whether the tip of the brush is pointed or bald, whether the force used is appropriate, whether the difference in the line is reflected in the use of "center forward" or "positive front", these techniques are poor by a millimeter, lost thousands of miles, if not pointed out, it is difficult for learners to accurately grasp.
Wang Jiqian demonstrated.
Another point, the so-called "way of pen and ink" of calligraphy and painting has become more and more deified in recent years, everyone likes to talk about Zen, talk about qi, talk about rhyme, these big truths are always empty, and the viewer and the painter are like entering the mountain forest covered by clouds and mist, listening to a lot of over-packaged language, but the pen is always unable to do it. Xu Xiaohu, who was less than forty years old at the time, was straightforward and earnest, did not blindly be humble and polite, and the problems were always to the point, and the two went straight to each other, and the reading was real and pleasant.
As a collector, Wang Jiqian also exercised a unique and accurate vision in the process of watching again and again, which was originally the judgment of calligraphy and painting identification, and it is precisely the key to a deep understanding of a painter's work, such as Gao Juhan said in the preface of "Painting Quotations": "Wang Shi not only looks at the inherent quality of pen and ink, but also looks at the role played by pen and ink in establishing form and formality or describing the structural function of realism." ...... In his incisive discussion of Ni Zhan, he regards Ni Shi as a typical example of the emphasis on pen and ink (due to Ni Shi's absolutely 'bland' composition, the pursuit and change of the picture are minimized), but when pointing out a certain piece of Ni Zhan's pseudo-shortcomings, he guides the viewer to see that the "distant stone" in the painting is just a combination of strokes... There can be no real structure'. In contrast, the real 'can hardly see any unnecessary gestures and strokes. There is a living inner logic in Ni's stone structure'. The failure of the forger is that 'he has not even succeeded in reaching the shape of Ni Zhan, whose paintings can be said to be meaningless.' ”
In addition, Xu Xiaohu was born in Nanjing in 1934, influenced by his Chinese and German parents, and received the diversified baptism of Eastern and Western cultures from an early age. Inspired by Wang Jiqian, Xu Xiaohu devoted his life to synthesizing the style analysis in modern art historiography, the meticulous analysis method in Japanese East Asian art history, and the identification method of traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting, and developed a clear and meticulous and new way of viewing and appraisal of calligraphy and painting. More than 40 years later, Xu Xiaohu re-examined Wang Jiqian's interpretation of pen and ink in his old age. The book adds new annotations and video lessons and details to the original dialogue.
Zhang Quan: Masters in the Wilderness: A Centenary of Chinese Archaeology, published in March 2022
The sentence on the title of the book, "My generation has sought research in a chaotic world, which is an act against the current" is exactly the essence of this book.
"Masters in the Wilderness" tells the story of the beginnings of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s. The birth of Chinese archaeology is depicted with the Geological Survey Institute, the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies, the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica, and the Institute of Construction, which are China's "unprecedented generation" people.
Among them, the Institute of History and Linguistics of academia sinica was established in 1928. In October 1936, the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica excavated the Yin Ruins fifteen times, and the presiding officers changed from Li Ji, Dong Zuobin, and Liang Siyong to younger archaeologists such as Shi Zhangru and Wang Xiang. A large number of oracle bones and various cultural relics have been excavated, and the Yin Shang era has been confirmed. Although the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies has existed for only four years, it has included two generations of Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei, Chen Yinke, Zhao Yuanren, and Li Ji, which can be regarded as the "prequel" of the Institute of Historical Language, and they embody the wind and bones of an era, and to this day, the sculptures of the four great teachers of Tsinghua still stand majestically on the Tsinghua campus.
To 1936, when Lu Xun died, the China Construction Society was only five years old, but it had already inspected more than 2,000 ancient buildings in hundreds of counties and cities, and the best of them were revealed to the Chinese people through the inspection reports of Liang Sicheng, Liu Dunzhen, Lin Huiyin and others. At the same time, they cracked the "Book of Heaven" "Building the French Style", and a history of Chinese architecture also took shape in Liang Sicheng's heart.
The earliest geological survey institute of the times was founded in 1913 by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of the Beiyang Government and presided over by Ding Wenjiang, and since then, the pioneers of China's geological circles represented by Ding Wenjiang, Weng Wenhao, and Zhang Hongzhao have cooperated with overseas scholars such as GeLip, Anderson, and Bu Dasheng to conduct field investigations, investigate mineral deposits, explore oil and coal mines, excavate dinosaur skeletons and various paleovertebrate fossils, and excavate prehistoric civilization sites.
"Masters in the Wilderness", pay attention to their pioneering achievements, but also pay attention to their era, in the 1920s when the eyes of the people looked at these people, it was full of doubts and misunderstandings, such as when the Shiyu Institute moved to Lizhuang, the local squires and people saw them carrying human remains, and once thought they were eating people; archaeologist Shi Zhangru went to Chaoxian County to investigate, and the local accompanying people firmly believed that he was Mr. Feng Shui, and repeatedly begged him to go to his home to help see feng shui; the dinosaur skeleton excavated by the geological survey was exhibited in Beibei, Chongqing. Some people even bowed down in front of the dinosaur skeleton with great reverence and regarded it as an important totem of China, the dragon, to reverently incense...
Even more difficult to fathom than these misunderstandings is the fate of this generation, who carefully navigated the chaotic world and survived in a desperate situation, and we cannot imagine today how the archaeological sites and cultural relics that we regard as treasures have been ignored and destroyed, and when Zhoukoudian was excavated, there was often a rumble of cannons nearby, and soldiers would suddenly appear, occupying the newly excavated cave test grenades of the researchers. Compared with war, archaeological excavations may be more unbearable than the "futility" of most of the time, the search for a needle in a haystack, and fate will only favor the extra fortunate.
In 1928, the 25-year-old Pei Wenzhong underwent a difficult "bottom-exploring" job in Zhoukoudian, that is, "pursuing the bottom of real fossil deposits", and the process of "bottom-exploring" often made people feel long, difficult and boring. In April of that year, he found the skull of a very precious person, a "Beijinger", and colleagues excitedly took photos of him, because all eyes were on the skull, and pei wen in the photo had only half a head. Sadly, all the ape-man fossils excavated by Zhoukoudian, including 5 ape-man skulls, were lost in 1941 as they were transported from Union Medical College to the United States, "bringing endless ecstasy and leaving endless regrets."
Kazuo Hotaru's The Great Kofun: Exploring the Mystery of the Front And Rear Round Grave was published in January 2022
When the plane lands nearby, we can always overlook the airport from the window position like a huge bird with wings spreading on the ground, or a matrix of high-rise buildings, a kind of industrialization created a huge. When the plane arrives over the southern part of Osaka, Japan, a huge monument will appear under the eyes, which is very remote and simple, it is a Japanese original front and back round tomb with the Egyptian pyramids and the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin in China, which is called the world's three major mausoleums.
"It presents an independent posture of refusing outsiders to enter. The mounds covered with forest (the slightly raised part of the kofun) are full of tension like giants lying on the ground stretching their limbs vigorously. The sparkling trenches surrounding the mounds also visually discriminate from the living spaces of modern people. However, what you may not notice is that the design of the trenches around the kofun is actually in the form of the Japanese archipelago, which highlights the specificity of the front and rear round mounds. ”
Oyama Kofun.
Japan refers to the period from the 4th to the 7th century as the "Kofun Culture", which is named after the huge mounds of earth, and these early tombs are spread over a wide area, many of which span nearly two thousand years and are still well preserved. "The Great Ancient Tomb: Exploring the Mystery of the Round Grave ahead" recreates in a more intuitive graphic form how the ancestors built such a huge tomb on flat ground.
There are many observation angles about the huge tomb, such as whether the most discussed tomb culture is influenced by Chinese burial culture, such as the most famous tomb in China as we know it, the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin, and the tomb left by the Northern Wei Dynasty at the same time as the ancient tomb era. Huge kofuns are very different from Chinese tombs, and The japanese giant kofun is a mound of soil, and coffins are placed at the highest point of the mound to bury the deceased, and there is no underground palace that Chinese tombs have bothered to create. The Chinese burials in the underground palace, here in the huge ancient tomb, are abstracted as wheels, and are placed on the ground layer by layer along the central area of the tomb, like guards.
Even more different from Chinese tombs, there are 150,000 kofuns in Japan, and only about 20 are known to be buried. "The Great Kofun" author Hosoji Kazuo said: "For most of the kofun, posterity does not name them after the legendary burial person, but uses affectionate place names as much as possible. This is true, for example, mt. Inari in Saitama Prefecture and Mount Shibamaru in Tokyo. This kofun in Osaka has long been known as 'Oyama'. Sometimes 'mountain' also represents the word 'immortal', so it is also called 'Great Immortal Tomb'. Although this tomb was named Rende Tomb, there is in fact no clear evidence to determine the identity of its burial. "It's also something we can't imagine.
"The Great Tomb" focuses more on the technical realization level, such as how to transport soil, how to mark the shape of the tomb with wooden stakes on the ground, how to confirm that the ground is horizontal, etc., which also provides some enlightenment to China, which has always paid more attention to cultural research, which is more about people's most primitive and simple curiosity - "Why build such a big thing?" Who the hell is it, and how did it come about?"
The author responds: "This time it is mainly the civil engineering of the construction of the kofun, which is different from the complex building structure of the past, and the sheer scale alone makes me stunned." And not only the big, the choice of geology, the treatment of springs, etc., the wisdom of the ancients is really breathtaking. ”
Zhang Quan's Interview with Chinese Civilization was published in December 2021.
Yuwen Soan, Ke Martin, Fu Majin, Gu Bin, Qian Liqun, Wang Fansen, Shu Hengzhe, Wu Hong, Zhang Longxi, Huang Jinxing... The most eminent thinkers of our time. From 2007 to the end of 2015, the author Zhang Quan visited dozens of Chinese and foreign scholars and interviewed 24 scholars, including the above scholars.
The book introduces their main academic ideas, and the author also becomes a person related to the story through listening. These interviews are collected into three parts, the first part is called "Ancient Illusions and Truths", including interviews with sinologists, which has the implication of viewing China from the perspective of the outside of Chinese culture; the second part focuses on the choices of intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty and the cost of modernization, and the pains of the past may still be onset; the third part is more concerned with the present and the future, in this era of globalization, cultural pluralism, theory is changeable, how China should live by itself, and how to get along with the world.
The sinologists of the first part are outside of a culture and often have new ideas, and the scholars in this part often have "subversive" remarks, and the themes of their most vivid and challenging academic views are interesting enough. For example, In his interview, Ke Martin paid attention to his views on the "reconstruction of history" by Han Confucianism, and Ke Martin believed that "book burning pit Confucianism" was only one of the countless stories made up by Confucians in the Han Dynasty, and the author combined Wang Fensen's "hindsight" and Ke Martin's "era misplaced" to argue the accumulation of errors, and scholars needed to be careful to examine them to return to the real historical context; when writing about the American scholar Elonor, he grasped his proposition that "cultural phenomena are not consistent with the change of dynasties", and focused on the discussion of the ruler, The advent of new genres such as notes had a lasting impact on the times. Although each one is short, it always leaves a distinct impression because it focuses on a few academic propositions.
Of course, another task of the interview is to know people and discuss the world, and it is necessary to sketch the personality and image of the interviewee for the reader, Zhang Quan also said: "They are either elegant, or intense, or serious, or some black humor." When I visited, their ages ranged from their fifties to their eighties, but looking back on an academic discovery decades ago, a childlike excitement and cunning still comes to mind. ”
For example, when writing About Rong Xinjiang, highlighting his diligence and the difficulty and tragedy of dunhuang's academic history, a historical moment is repeatedly emphasized: In 1979, Rong Xinjiang, a sophomore student in the history department of Peking University, listened to another "sad history" about Dunhuang in class. Professor Tang Changru was in class, and suddenly sighed, saying that Chinese scholars had compiled the Dunhuang Materials in the 1950s, and because many Dunhuang scrolls were scattered in Europe, they could not be seen, and some details were speculated through research. Later, the Japanese scholar Ikeda Wen went to Europe and compared the original Dunhuang volumes collected by Britain, France and other countries, and picked out more than three hundred errors in the Dunhuang Materials. His later article, published in the Journal of Orientalism, had an explosive effect, and many Chinese scholars wept bitterly as they read it.
The humor of Qian Zhong's book jumped on the paper. In the 1990s, Elonno decided to choose a translation of the Pipe Cone. Through Zhang Guangzhi's introduction, Elonor wrote a letter to Qian Zhong. Soon, Qian Zhongshu's reply in English was placed on Airano's desk—Qian Zhongshu gladly agreed. However, he wrote at the end of the letter: "I have only one condition, and if you encounter any difficulties in translation, don't ask me." In a letter to Zhang Guangzhi, Qian Zhongshu also described the Pipe Cone Compilation as "my loose and formless behemoth."