In 1998, an adventurous cement factory owner stumbled upon an ancient shipwreck while diving off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
This typical medieval dhow, named "Blackstone", dates back more than 1,200 years. After salvaging the water, archaeologists found that the "Black Stone" was full of goods from China, of which 98% were ceramics, with changsha kiln porcelain being the most, with 56,500 pieces, in addition to a small number of Yue kiln celadon and northern white porcelain.
At that time, the "Black Stone" set off from the southern port of the Tang Empire to transport these ceramics to the Islamic countries in the Middle East, but unfortunately sank on the sea in Southeast Asia, and buried a piece of history in the deep sea.
For thousands of years, the busy land and maritime Silk Roads have not lacked in Chinese ceramics. The word "China" in LaoWai's mouth refers to both China and porcelain.
▲ Tang Changsha kiln porcelain poetry pot. Image source/figureworm creative
Look at China in ceramics
Fire and earth awaken the "childhood" of mankind.
According to research, the production of pottery in the mainland has a history of more than 10,000 years.
In the daily lives of primitive ancestors, earth gave the pottery body, fire gave it life, and humans gave it a soul. Between the north and the south of the world, the Yellow River and the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River are famous for their faience pottery; the lower reaches of the river are represented by exquisite white and black pottery; and the southeast coastal areas are famous for their printed hard pottery.
The production of pottery is a worldwide phenomenon, and many countries and peoples around the world have prehistoric pottery remains, but porcelain is a unique symbol of Chinese civilization.
Thousands of years after the birth of Chinese pottery, the original porcelain in early form was produced in the late Shang Dynasty, more than 3,000 years ago, and developed into the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the earliest mature porcelain, celadon porcelain, appeared.
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the production area and scale of porcelain continued to expand, and there were kiln sites in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Henan and other provinces, and the celadon in the south flourished, and the white porcelain in the north began to emerge.
▲Western Jin Dynasty blue glaze to ward off evil beasts. Image Source/Figureworm Creative
By the Sui and Tang dynasties, a pattern of "southern Green and Northern White" was formed.
The "six famous celadon kilns" Yuezhou kiln, Dingzhou kiln, Wuzhou kiln, Yuezhou kiln, Shouzhou kiln, Hongzhou kiln are famous all over the world, and the fired porcelain is elegant and beautiful. The poem of the late Tang Dynasty poet Tortoise Meng, "The nine autumn winds dew more and more kilns open, and seize the green color of a thousand peaks", so that the verdant glaze color jumps on the paper.
In the north, the white porcelain represented by the Xing kiln is equally divided into autumn colors with celadon porcelain. Lu Yu, the "Tea Saint", said in his book "Tea Classic" that "Xing porcelain silver, Yue porcelain jade, Xing porcelain snow, Yue porcelain ice, Xing porcelain white and tea color Dan, More porcelain blue and tea green." ”
After the Tang Dynasty, a large number of Chinese porcelain was exported abroad, and porcelain-making technology also spread overseas.
In the middle of the 8th century, the armies of the Tang Dynasty's Anxi Capital Protectorate and the combined forces of the Central Asian states led by the Arab Empire (Dashi) fought a major battle north of the Onion Ridge (Pamir Plateau), known in history as the "Battle of Qiluo".
The famous Tang Dynasty general Gao Xianzhi from Goguryeo led tens of thousands of troops to go deep 700 miles and held out with the Great Food Alliance Army for several days, but due to the rebellion of the Gelug troops in the Tang Army, the Gao Xianzhi Army was in chaos, and finally lost to the Great Food Alliance.
This was the only victory over the Anxi Army in several border conflicts between the Arab Empire and the Tang Dynasty. In history, Gao Xianzhi "lost seventy thousand people" and returned home in a big defeat. This encounter between the Eastern and Western Empires ended in the defeat of the Tang army, and some Tang soldiers and civilians were taken prisoner, including a literati named Du Huan.
By chance, Du Huan was taken to Kufa on the banks of the Peles River, and took the opportunity to travel to West Asia and North Africa, before being released back to the Central Plains many years later.
After Du Huan returned to the Tang Dynasty, he wrote his experience in the "JingxingJi", mentioning many Tang Dynasty craftsmen who lived in the mesopotamian plains. These craftsmen spread Chinese porcelain-making, weaving, painting and other techniques to Central Asia, West Asia, and even the Mediterranean. They may have been captives like Du Huan, or they may have come here with the silk road camel bells and on trading merchant ships.
Datang is eclectic and accommodating to all states, not only spreading ceramic culture through the "Silk Road" that runs through China and the West, but also introducing exotic customs in the creation of fired ceramics.
As the representative of ancient glazed pottery, "Tang Sancai" reflects the heroic momentum of Datang to open up territory and expand the territory.
Most of the iconic works in Tang Sancai are taken from The Hu merchants in the Western Regions, such as the Zaile Camel Figurine, which is based on the "Desert Boat" that travels to and from the Silk Road. Along the overland and maritime Silk Road, traces of Tang Sancai can be found everywhere, and the "Persian Sancai" was created in Iran, the "Nara Sancai" in Japan, and the "Silla Sancai" on the Korean Peninsula.
At the same time, in order to pursue the wealth of the Eastern Empire, merchant ships from all over the world landed on the southeast coast of China, traded with the Tang Dynasty, and humbly learned advanced production techniques from the Tang Dynasty.
In the Arabic mythology collection One Thousand and One Nights, there is a classic story called "The Adventures of Sinbad".
The adventurer Sinbad in the story sailed to the east seven times, starting from Amansuhar in the Arabian Peninsula, crossing the Strait of Malacca and entering the South China Sea, on the way through nine deaths, through many magical and magnificent places, and even fighting with incredible monsters, to reach the empire of ceramics.
Sinbad made a voyage to China and found it an endless treasure. He lived here for many years before returning to his homeland full of treasures such as Chinese ceramics and living a life of king-like prosperity.
Sinbad's voyageurous adventures have many exaggerated elements, but his prototype is derived from a large number of Arab sailors who sailed to China during the Tang and Song dynasties.
The ancient shipwreck of the "Black Stone" full of Chinese ceramics is not another "Sinbad"?
▲Tang Changsha kiln porcelain. Source/Southern Dynasty Ziyun
In the Changsha kiln porcelain, which is the favorite of the merchants of the "Black Stone", its underglaze paintings can be seen highlighting the influence of the fusion of East and West, including Chinese style patterns and Tang Dynasty poetry, as well as many Arab religious proverbs and Islamic patterns, as well as patterns from Indian Buddhism, writing a geo-cultural history spanning the East and west.
On a porcelain bowl on the shipwreck of the Black Stone, there is a painting of a ferocious Capricorn fish, which is a Buddhist symbol of disaster relief. Paradoxically, the edges of the porcelain bowl are unusually sprinkled with a large brown glaze, and it looks as if the big fish in the bowl is burrowing into the glaze of the dark clouds and waves, and the Capricorn fish, as a protective god, seems to churn in the waves.
Was this an accidental misstep by a craftsman, or was it a foreshadowing of the fate of the Blackstone? There is a definite number in the darkness.
When a ship sank to the bottom of the sea, the Tang Dynasty also fell after the Anshi Rebellion until it perished.
The transformation of Tang and Song porcelain
In the fifth dynasty of the late Tang Dynasty, Zhejiang, which was rich in celadon porcelain, appeared a divided regime- the Wuyue State founded by Qian Wei.
The Qian family took culture as the foundation of the world, emphasized the rule of literature, practiced benevolent government, and passed down the Tang Dynasty Yue kiln porcelain.
In the history books, it is recorded that Wu Yueguo offered porcelain to the Central Plains Dynasty several times, and most of the tributes were the most exquisite secret color porcelain in the Yue kiln. In the tomb of King Wuyue excavated in Hangzhou, a large number of Yue kiln porcelain was also found, which has a wide range of categories and is dignified and beautiful.
The State of Wu Yue was only a divided regime in a remote corner, and the Qian family's brief rule in the southeast was only a few generations away. However, after losing power, the Qian clan did not fall into the curse of the defeat of successive kings, but continued to branch out and develop into a southeastern Wang clan, which has flourished and developed for thousands of years, with many talents, and in modern times, Qian Mu, Qian Zhongshu, Qian Xuesen, Qian Weichang and other celebrities are all after the Wuyue Qian clan.
Artifacts are a reflection of personality. When the warlords of all sides divided their positions, Qian Wei was people-oriented, and he often said: "The people are the foundation of the society." The people are precious, the society is secondary, and the people are loved without moving. Therefore, for thousands of years, King Qian has always been a positive image in Jiangnan folk.
From the simple and elegant Yue kiln secret color porcelain, you can glimpse qian wang's culture-oriented character.
After more than half a century of five generations and ten kingdoms, a new dynasty ushered in a new era of porcelain culture.
The Song Dynasty was a dynasty that developed in the fields of literature, art, philosophy, education, science and technology after the Tang Dynasty.
The prosperity of the urban economy and overseas trade between the two Song Dynasties created the overall prosperity of handicraft industry, and also formed an unprecedented brilliant period in the history of Chinese ceramics, with kiln farms in the north and south blooming everywhere. At present, the ruins of kilns in the Song Dynasty have been discovered in more than 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.
Different from the majestic atmosphere of Tang Dynasty ceramics, the aesthetic fashion of Song Dynasty porcelain, in other words, is light and elegant, such as light makeup beauty, pavilions and jade standing, and also like Lin Quan hermit, high wind and bright festival.
The late Qing Dynasty scholar Xu Zhiheng talked about the development of Chinese porcelain in his book "Drinking Liuzhai Porcelain", saying: "Xi Zhe has a saying: 'The closer the world is, the more evolved it is.'" 'The Chinese porcelain that is balanced by this principle is not great. ”
This means that many artifacts in history are more advanced the closer they are, but this principle is not correct for Chinese porcelain. In the view of some scholars, Song Dynasty porcelain is the peak of the history of Chinese ceramics, and it is elegant to the extreme.
The solemnity and simplicity of Song porcelain are closely related to the historical background of the Song Dynasty reshaping the monarchy and ruling the country with culture.
In 960, the Later Zhou general Zhao Kuangyin staged a good play of "yellow robe plus body" at Chen Qiaoyi, establishing the Song Dynasty for the Song Taizu.
Zhao Kuangyin's throne seemed easy to come by, but the beginning of the founding of the Song Dynasty was not smooth sailing, and in the first two years, there were two sections of the original Later Zhou that led to rebellion. Song Taizu found Zhao Pu, a think tank, and asked him, "I want to quell the military turmoil in the world and make the country long-term peace and stability, what should I do?" ”
Zhao Pu told him that since the late Tang Dynasty, the world's great chaos was all due to the excessive expansion of the feudal towns, the weak and the strong, you want to govern the world, there is no other shortcut, only to seize their military power, curb the local finances, so as to stabilize the world.
Zhao Kuangyin, who was born as a military general, understood as soon as he heard it. His emotional intelligence was also very high, and soon after, he used another drama of "a glass of wine to release the military power" and confiscated the military power of the founding general. From the beginning of the "release of military power through a glass of wine", the Song Dynasty embarked on the road of strengthening imperial power and weakening localities, and emphasized literature over military force, and gave preferential treatment to civilian subjects to ensure the stability of the regime.
It is said that on a stone stele in the palace, there is also an engraving of the national policy established by Zhao Kuangyin: "This dynasty does not kill scholars and doctors."
The political and economic status of literati doctors in the Song Dynasty was extremely high, and their profound humanistic qualities and aesthetic tastes that tended to be natural and pure were also integrated into the fresh and elegant Song porcelain.
Therefore, Song porcelain, like Song painting, advocates humanities and praises nature. This performance in Song painting is the natural composition of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", and the embodiment on porcelain is the sky and mountain color of Ru kiln.
▲ Song Wang Ximeng's "Map of a Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" (partial). Image source/network
The style of Song porcelain
Song porcelain, with "Ru kiln as the kui" (Southern Song Dynasty Ye Zhen "Tan Zhai Pen Heng"), Ru kiln porcelain is repeatedly mentioned in the notes of the Song Dynasty literati, enshrined as a charm of the instrument, known as the first of celadon porcelain. In later generations, there is a saying: "Even if there is a family property, it is not as good as a Ru kiln." ”
There are very few heirlooms in the Ru kiln, mainly pots and washes, and every time they appear at auction, they will be auctioned for sky-high prices.
The tire color and glaze color of Ru kiln porcelain are different from other celadon porcelain, and the tire color of Ru kiln is often fragrant gray, and the glaze is a faint azure color.
"Rain over the sky where the clouds break, such a color to do the future." Azure is the true color of "heaven", that is, the true color of "Tao". Therefore, even the official kilns set up by the imperial court often drew on the aesthetic norms established by the Ru kilns.
Ru kiln ranked first among the five famous kilns of the Song Dynasty, followed by guan kiln, ge kiln, Ding kiln and Jun kiln.
As the name suggests, the official kiln was an official porcelain kiln directly controlled by the imperial court, representing royal standards.
During the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song (1100-1126), the imperial court set up official kilns in Fenjing (present-day Kaifeng, Henan). Emperor Huizong of song was a literary emperor, good at poetry, calligraphy and painting, good at ancient habits, and very fond of Taoism, calling himself "The Emperor of Daojun", favoring Taoist alchemists, and advocating quiet and inaction. Therefore, in order to satisfy the aesthetic taste of this "Daojun", the official kiln pursued the natural color, and its porcelain glaze color referred to the azure color of the Ru kiln, and the shape was mostly imitated the bronze and jade of the Shang Zhou.
▲ Song Zhao Tuo's "Wenhui Diagram". Image source/network
However, the good times did not last long. During the Jing kang rebellion, the Great Song Dynasty suffered heavy losses, not only the two emperors of Song Huizong and Song Qinzong were captured, but even the "officials, insiders, internal servants, craftsmen, craftsmen, and the accumulation of the treasury" were also empty, the books and books and court ceremonial utensils were looted, and the official kiln utensils were also destroyed.
This caused a headache for the imperial court in Nandu, and the ceremonial instruments were gone, and a series of sacrifice activities could not be carried out. Emperor Gaozong of Song could have avoided his father and brother, but without these symbolic political activities, he could not prove the legitimacy of his regime.
In the fourth year of Jianyan (1130), after landing on the shore of Emperor Gaozong of Song, who had been adrift at sea for several months, he hurriedly ordered people to restart the decaying Yue kiln in Yuezhou (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang), burn porcelain ceremonial vessels to replace the artifacts abducted by the Jin people, and declare that he was the imperial court that had succeeded the Great Song Zhengshuo.
Later, the Southern Song Dynasty court "attacked the legacy of the old Capital" and re-established the official kiln in Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang). The official kilns that migrated with the imperial court witnessed the bitter history of the broken mountains and rivers and the southward migration of the Song Dynasty.
▲Southern Song Dynasty official kiln celadon rhombus fancy washing. Source/ National Palace Museum, Taipei
Different from the twists and turns of the migration of the official kilns, the ge kilns have left a confusing history.
Brother kiln is not found in the Song dynasty literature records, until the Ming Dynasty was included in the Song Dynasty famous kiln, and the name is also obtained very casually, it is said that the Song Dynasty in Longquan County, Longquan County, the state of the Song Dynasty, there are brothers who make porcelain, each of them opened a kiln, the brother presided over is called "brother kiln", the younger brother opened is called "brother kiln".
It is also said that the name of the kiln is a harmonic stem, and the kiln is also a kind of "official kiln", because people at that time did not understand the Jiangsu and Zhejiang dialects, mistaking the "official kiln" for "brother cave", in order to spread false rumors, referring to it as "brother kiln", and later people invented a "brother kiln".
Regarding the origin of the kiln and the age of firing, there are still many opinions and disagreements.
▲Southern Song Dynasty ge kiln celadon sunflower mouth plate. Source/ National Palace Museum, Taipei
The main utensils of the kiln are through-ear bottles, fish ear stoves, five-legged washing and various types of plates and bowls. Its outstanding feature lies in a kind of natural "defective beauty", that is, the "open piece" deliberately left in the firing process, its depth is like "golden wire", but due to illness, the shape is simple.
This feature of the kiln also has a history.
It is said that when the Zhang brothers were firing porcelain together, the kiln was about to be full, but the younger brother accidentally poured several buckets of cold water into the kiln. Porcelain firing is very exquisite, because the porcelain tire and the porcelain glaze will shrink in case of fire, at this time, if the contraction ratio of the tire and the glaze is not the same, cracks will occur.
This mistake of the Zhang brothers made the porcelain that should have been smooth on the surface full of cracks after being burned out, they thought it was a defective product, but they did not expect that when they were sold on the market, the very beautiful beauty created by these cracks was loved by customers, and the porcelain was quickly snapped up, thus laying the status of the kiln.
▲Southern Song Dynasty kiln celadon ear three-legged furnace. The unique glazed opening is an important feature of Go kiln porcelain. Source/ National Palace Museum, Taipei
Dingyao is a famous kiln in Hebei that emerged after the Xing kiln of the Tang Dynasty, and its products are mainly white porcelain, and its rhyme is like "Gao Shi Lying in the Snowy Mountains, And the Beauty under the Moon Ming Forest". The white porcelain glaze of the Dingyao kiln is often seen with flowing marks, commonly known as "tear marks", such as the tears of the beauty, which makes people feel poignant and moving, which is also like the fate of the Dingyao kiln.
After the Jingkang Revolution, the Jin people occupied the northern region, the Dingyao kiln experienced war trauma, production stagnated, a large number of craftsmen fled south, and the excellent craftsmanship was transmitted to the southern Jingdezhen and other places. With the recovery and development of the social economy in the north, the kiln workers who remained in the north also restarted production, in order to meet the needs of the Jin people, from light and elegant to secular, developed to the decline of the Yuan Dynasty, fine evil products disappeared, and only some daily coarse porcelain was produced.
The site of the Jun kiln is in present-day Yuzhou City, Henan Province, and unlike the other four major kilns, the Jun kiln porcelain is heavy in brilliant and colorful, and the background color of azure is colored with copper red, just like the blue sky sunset.
Jun kilns burned from the Northern Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, and expanded in all directions, from Henan in the south to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia in the north, forming a huge system of Jun kilns throughout North China.
In addition to the five famous kilns, the two Song dynasty kilns shine like stars, distributed in the north and south of the great river.
▲Jinjun kiln azure glaze purple spot ruyi pillow. Source/ National Palace Museum, Taipei
Northern celadon to Shaanxi Tongchuan Yaozhou kiln as the leader, its fine products can be comparable to the Yue kiln secret color porcelain; Hebei Cizhou kiln is the largest kiln system in the north during the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the style is lively and rugged; Zhejiang's Longquan kiln pushed the firing level of celadon to a new peak; Fujian Jian'an's kiln was influenced by the Song people's tea drinking and tea fighting style, and the tea cups produced were widely popular and became the products of imperial tribute.
In addition, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, began to fire a kind of blue and white porcelain, its glaze color is white in blue, and it has the beauty of both celadon and white porcelain, and is warm as jade. The area around Jingdezhen in Fuliang County is good at porcelain making, and this place name is given after the Song Zhenzong era name "Jingde", and many years later, it will become the "porcelain capital" of China.
American scholar Will Duran said that the Song Dynasty was China's "Renaissance" era.
The charm, artistic conception and interest contained in Song porcelain reflect the style of the Great Song Dynasty, and also move away with the song dynasty and the sea trade of the Song people to the world.
Song porcelain, cross the ocean to see you
During the Tang and Song dynasties, the important ports of China's Maritime Silk Road were closely linked to porcelain produced by local kilns.
The Yue kiln celadon of the Tang Dynasty was one of the first Chinese export porcelain to sell overseas, thanks in part to the rise of the commercial city of Yangzhou.
At the height of Yue kiln celadon porcelain, Yangzhou was one of the largest chambers of commerce in China, gathering thousands of merchants from Silla, Japan, Persia (Iran), Dashi (Arabia) and other countries.
▲Song Yue kiln celadon cup holder. Image source/figureworm creative
In the Song Dynasty, the Yue kiln declined, the Longquan kiln began to flourish, and the port of Mingzhou (present-day Ningbo, Zhejiang) became the preferred port for the export of Jiangsu and Zhejiang porcelain, and the land of Wuyue was "entered by navigation, and the tribute was millions". After Wu Yueguo returned to the Northern Song Dynasty, the Song Dynasty set up two Zhejiang Road City Shipping Divisions to manage the affairs of Hangzhou and Mingzhou.
According to history, Mingzhou in the Song Dynasty could manufacture large ships carrying thousands of stones, which was the first in the national shipbuilding industry. During the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song, he sent Xu Jing on an envoy to Goryeo and ordered people to build two large ships in Mingzhou, called "Shenzhou", which were converted into a load of about 300 tons. When the two ships arrived in Goryeo, they frightened the Goryeo people enough, and they stopped on the shore to watch, cheering and admiring.
Longquan kiln porcelain from Mingzhou is spread throughout Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Indian Peninsula and the east coast of Africa. Among the ancient Chinese porcelain found in Africa in recent years, the number of Longquan kiln porcelain is second only to the later blue and white porcelain.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties, another world-class port on the southeast coast was Quanzhou Port.
Quanzhou is located on the west bank of the Taiwan Strait, the coastline can dock ships in the natural haven of dozens, known as "the sound of the rising sea in the world", known as "the first largest port in the East", there are still many ancient docks remaining.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties, ships departing from Quanzhou Port provided a steady stream of goods for countries on the Maritime Silk Road, and China's porcelain, tea, silk, etc. were sought-after goods.
With the fusion of cultures at home and abroad, in the Song Dynasty, Zen Buddhism and quiet Taoism, which "see clearly and become Buddhas on the ground", were also favored by rulers and scribes, forming an inclusive cultural atmosphere of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.
At that time, there was a concept called "Zen Tea One Taste", and Confucians and monks frequently interacted, drinking tea, poetry, zen, and viewing.
Su Dongpo, a great scholar of the Song Dynasty, once went to Jiangxi with Huang Tingjian to visit his old friend Buddha Seal monk, and the three of them took a boat on the night of the moon to follow the waves, so happy that their descendants took the anecdotes of "boating on the moon night" and "night drinking in the lotus pond" as the theme of ceramics, calligraphy and painting.
Due to the rise of tea culture, a new glazed tea vessel came into being, that is, a black glazed tea cup. Among them, the Jizhou kiln in Jiangxi is rich and colorful, and the black glazed cups fired are known as "Jizhou Tianmu".
Japan, As a neighbor of China, was deeply influenced by the tea culture of the Song Dynasty. During the Southern Song Dynasty, The Japanese Rongxi Zen master returned to Japan from Zhejiang with tea seeds, learned from Chinese monks to plant tea trees in Zen monasteries, and introduced the Song Dynasty's tea drinking methods to Japan, which developed into a unique Japanese tea ceremony.
The Japanese not only introduced the Chinese tea drinking fashion into China, but also loved the black-glazed tea cups of the Song Dynasty, and regarded them as "Tianmu porcelain", which was regarded as the most precious treasure and profoundly influenced the development of Japanese ceramic art.
Yuan qinghua, elegant and customary appreciation
In the 28th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1291), a sailing ship sailed out of Quanzhou, then a major international port, and began an international voyage, and after going south to Java, it would cross the Indian Ocean to its destination persia.
The ship carried Princess Kuokuozhen, who was married to the Ilkhanate, and three envoys who escorted her to marriage. In addition, there is Marco Polo, a traveler from Italy, who is going to return home on this ship and end his 17-year life in China.
The port of Quanzhou is also known as "Thorn Tong Port". According to legend, in order to expand the city outline of Quanzhou, a jiedushi envoy planted thorn trees in the city, and when the flowers bloomed, the city was full of red and red, and the scenery was picturesque. Marco Polo later recalled: "Thorn tong is one of the largest ports in the world. It is indeed unimaginable that a large number of merchants gather here, and the goods are piled up. ”
Marco Polo not only witnessed the blooming of thorn trees here, but also witnessed the export of Chinese porcelain to all over the world. Years later, his memoir, The Travels of Marco Polo, became a bestseller in Europe, and its depictions of China convinced Westerners that the Far East was a cornucopia of inexhaustible wealth.
However, the prosperity of the Song and Yuan maritime trade was not given by God, but from the industriousness and bravery of Chinese setting sail to sea.
40 years after Marco Polo's last look at the port of Quanzhou, Wang Dayuan, a nanchang man with a weak crown, came to Quanzhou and sailed a long way on a merchant ship.
Wang Dayuan has great ambitions since he was a child, but he has not taken the path of traditional scholars and doctors to study and advance, but has the intention of investigating the world. In Quanzhou, Wang Dayuan saw people of all colors and languages talking at the docks, and saw a variety of Chinese porcelain being transported to the cabin. This aroused the curiosity of the Jiangxi youth, who wanted to see what was on the other side of the sea.
On this voyage, 20-year-old Wang Dayuan traveled from Quanzhou through Hainan Island, Champa, Malacca, Java, Sumatra, Burma, India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, and then crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Morocco in North Africa, and then returned to China, traveling all over Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
The first voyage lasted 4 years, and it was not until the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1334) that Wang Dayuan returned to Quanzhou. After three years of rest, Wang Dayuan risked his life again to sea, despite worldly prejudices, and traveled to the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and other places.
After Wang Dayuan returned to China, he wrote the record of what he saw and heard with his own eyes on two long voyages into "Island Yi Zhiluo", and later scholars called him "Marco Polo of the East".
One of the major contributions of Wang Dayuan's "Island Yizhiluo" is to record in detail the route of the export of Chinese ceramics in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, as well as the varieties of exported porcelain. According to the book, in addition to the traditional celadon and celadon porcelain, there was also a different kind of "blue and white flower ware" in the porcelain shipped to the Middle East and North Africa at that time.
Some experts believe that this kind of porcelain recorded by Wang Dayuan is blue and white porcelain.
Blue and white porcelain is an underglaze color porcelain with a pattern depicted on the porcelain tire with cobalt material, and the blue pattern after glazing firing, which first appeared in the kiln of Gong county, Henan in the Tang Dynasty, and matured in the Yuan Dynasty.
Compared with Song porcelain, Yuan Qinghua can be said to be a product of "secularization".
The blue and white colors of blue and white porcelain are in line with the aesthetic taste of the Mongolian nobility.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the "national custom is still white", the Mongol nation has always respected white, and the Jiuyi Bailu (dào, the banner of the ancient army) is a symbol of the supreme power of the Mongol Empire. Marco Polo also recalled that during his time in China, whenever there was a festive festival, the Mongolian nobles had to wear white robes and give each other white gifts.
Blue is also a favorite color of the Mongols. The palaces of the Yuan Dynasty were often decorated with blue glazed tiles, "tiles slippery glazed, and the sky is the same", which reminds them of the blue sky on the vast grassland.
The five famous kilns of the Song Dynasty mentioned above are basically monochrome glazes or "kiln changes", some monochrome glazes with a small amount of depictions, the white of the kiln is a pure milk white, and the green of the Ru kiln is the blue of the sky blue rain. Song porcelain is plain and natural, elegant and introverted, as if it can include the vastness of the world, see the mountain or the mountain, see the water or the water, quite Zen.
Literati aesthetics created the monochromatic glaze era of Song porcelain, and after the Mongols entered the Central Plains, they could not appreciate the literati aesthetics of the Song Dynasty. Yuan Qinghua abandoned elegance and opened up another path for Chinese porcelain.
Since the Yuan Dynasty, a gorgeous, rich, and straightforward artistic trend has been widely used in porcelain craftsmanship, rather than pursuing glaze as subtle and warm as jade.
The decoration on Yuan Dynasty porcelain was not as much as the Song dynasty porcelain, which used the way of "shaping" and "carving", but became the way of "painting". For blue and white porcelain, cobalt is equivalent to the ink used to paint on paper. The Mongolian nobles also felt that the domestic cobalt material was not bright enough, and ordered the use of imported cobalt materials from the Middle East, called "Su Ma Li Qing".
The patterns on the blue and white porcelain, whether it is auspicious ornaments such as dragons and phoenixes, unicorns, ruyi, peonies, or landscapes, figures, flowers and birds, are all clear at a glance. The craftsmen also "painted" the historical stories that the common people liked on the porcelain, and the blue and white porcelain showed familiar allusions such as "Xiao He Yue chased Han Xin", "Zhou Yafu Tun Xiaoliu Camp", "Wen Ji Gui Han", "Three Gu Maolu", "Wei Chi Gong Savior" and so on.
After the yuanqinghua flourished, from the king to the people, they could feel an open and intuitive "beauty" on the porcelain, which can be called elegant and popular appreciation.
In order to promote the production of Yuan Qinghua, the Yuan Dynasty set up the "Floating Beam Porcelain Bureau" in Jingdezhen, which was specifically responsible for firing porcelain for the government and porcelain needed for official trade. This decision changed Jingdezhen's position in the ceramics industry.
Because of the inconvenience of land transportation, Jingdezhen was less affected by the war in the late Song and early Yuan dynasties, and at this time, it also gathered craftsmen from all over the north and south who fled to this place, concentrating on talents, technology, raw materials and other advantages, and constantly absorbing foreign skills.
As a result, Jingdezhen gathered the world's porcelain-making skills, sprung up, and gradually became the center of porcelain making in the country, "far and near, those who use their skills to eat power are like birds." But all the ceramic craftsmen who have some skills have come to Jingdezhen to make a living, and the porcelain they produce is all over the world.
The Yuan Dynasty was a multi-ethnic unified dynasty with extremely open foreign trade. According to Wang Dayuan's "Island Yizhiluo", there were more than 50 major porcelain exporting places on the mainland at that time, including countries and regions in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia and North Africa, including today's Ben, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Iran and other countries and regions.
▲Yuan Qinghua Four Love Tu Mei Vase, Hubei Provincial Museum Collection. Source/Southern Dynasty Ziyun
The number of extant yuanqinghua in China is relatively small. The most famous collection of Yuan Qinghua in the world is the Adibil Mausoleum Mosque in Iran and the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey.
Among them, the Adibil Mausoleum Mosque is one of the most famous museums in the collection of Chinese porcelain, with 28 pieces of Yuan Qinghua porcelain.
According to Iranian literature, these porcelains came from the Ilkhanate.
The founder of the Ilkhanate was Hulegu, the brother of Kublai Khan. In 1259, when Hulagu's Western Expedition conquered the Arab Empire, news came from the Central Plains of the death of the Mongol Khan Möngke. Hulagu had wanted to stop the western expedition and lead the Mongol army back to the dynasty, but soon after, he heard that Kublai Khan had inherited the Khanship of the Mongol Empire. Hulagu had to remain in West Asia, send envoys to support Kublai Khan, and accept Kublai Khan's canonization. The Ilkhanate, as a vassal of the Yuan Dynasty, ruled the territory between the Amu Darya River and Syria.
After the collapse of the Mongol Empire, the Ilkhanate also fell to the end, and the yuanqinghua in the court fell into the hands of the new Iranian king, and went to the Adibil Mausoleum Mosque, which is still collected to this day.
The rise and fall of dynasties is like a passing smoke cloud, but the vicissitudes of world culture, religious belief, and ethnic integration have been inscribed into the Yuan Qinghua, leaving an indelible trace overseas.
▲Yuanqinghua glaze red skeleton carved lid jar, Hebei Provincial Museum collection. Image Source/Figureworm Creative
The porcelain pagoda of Yongle the Great
During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty (1403-1424), after Ming Chengzu Zhu Di seized the throne from his nephew Emperor Jianwen, he was often uneasy. It is said that after the Battle of Jingnan, Emperor Jianwen did not die, but escaped the pursuit of the rebel army and fled overseas. In order to find the whereabouts of his nephew, Zhu Di ordered Zheng He to lead the fleet out to sea many times, completing Zheng He's feat of going to the West.
The whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen have long been a mystery for eternity. The practical significance of Zheng He's voyage to the West was more to promote the prestige of the country, open up tributary trade routes, and expand the influence of the Ming Dynasty on Asia and even East African countries. When Zheng He's fleet crossed the Arabian Sea and reached the coast of East Africa, it was 80 years earlier than the later Western navigator Da Gama who sailed from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope to India.
During the years from Yongle to Xuande, Zheng He led a huge fleet of ships, carrying a large amount of gold and silver treasures, and went to the West seven times to show China's strength to the countries along the way. Chinese porcelain followed this ceramic road to the land of far East Africa.
In his book The Victory of the Stars, Zheng He's retinue, Fei Xin, mentioned that porcelain was used in places like Mogadishu and Brava in Somalia, where Chinese ceramics were an important commodity.
Another great event of the Yongle Dynasty was that Zhu Di built a "porcelain pagoda" at the Dabao'en Temple in Nanjing in honor of his parents.
Zhu Di named the pagoda The Great Bao'en Temple Pagoda, and in the inscription praised his parents Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang and Empress Ma, reported the grace of his father and mother, and prayed for the blessings of the people of Li.
The construction of the Pagoda of Dabao'en Temple in Nanjing took 19 years, costing 2.55 million taels of silver and more than 100,000 craftsmen. The tower is all made of tiles and five-color glazed tiles, crystal clear, the ground is paved with blue and white porcelain floor tiles, the height of the tower is about 28 meters, equivalent to more than 20 floors high. As soon as the wind blows, the wind chimes on the top of the tower and under each cornice will sound.
This grand porcelain pagoda is nominally dedicated to Zhu Di's parents, but in fact it is also to show the people of the world that Zhu Di's orthodox status. Some people believe that Zhu Di's birth mother is not Empress Ma, but someone else, and the construction of this pagoda is also Zhu Di's consolation to her birth mother.
From the Ming Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty, everyone who went to Nanjing was deeply shocked by the Dabao'en Temple Pagoda.
At the foot of Zhongshan Mountain, or fishing boats on the river, you can see this pagoda made of ceramics. At night, the pagoda burns lamps, 100 monks take turns on duty, add oil and cut the core, consume tens of thousands of pounds of fuel a year, the light shines on the earth, and during the day, "five-color glass shines on the clouds", which can also be seen dozens of miles away.
Westerners regard the Dabao'en Temple Pagoda as a symbol of Chinese civilization, calling it the "Nanjing Porcelain Pagoda" and listing it as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Whether in the paintings of Dutch painters or in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, the figure of the porcelain tower can be found. There is a story in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale about a teenager named "Dongfeng", who had just flown back from China, and he told the mother of the wind: "I just came from China, danced around the porcelain tower, and made all the bells jingle. ”
When the east wind swept through the West, from the Ming To the Qing, the imperial power was highly concentrated, the relationship between the monarch and the subjects was like a master and a slave, making the whole of China like a closed "big countryside", some craftsmen were incorporated into the artisan register, working for the officials for life, the maritime trade was curbed, once "no one was allowed to go to the sea", only official and commercial trade was allowed.
Artifacts are the style of an era. In this context, porcelain naturally cannot "return to vulgarity and elegance".
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, it was still "blue and white dominating the world", and Yongle and Xuande blue and white porcelain were pushed by posterity as the crown of blue and white porcelain in the Ming Dynasty.
After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there were five-colored porcelain, with a variety of shapes and simple painting styles; the Doucai porcelain in the Chenghua years competed for the beauty and fine painting work; the color glazed porcelain produced by the Jingdezhen official kiln was an attempt to "antique" the Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, with the bright red, Jiqing and sweet white glazed porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande years as the three famous products.
▲Ming Chenghua Doucai Chicken Bowl Cup. Source/ National Palace Museum, Taipei
By the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, social unrest, the peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng destroyed the rule of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchus outside Guanwai reaped the benefits and entered the Central Plains, and porcelain also underwent a brief period of transformation at this time.
Due to the chaos of the war, the craftsmen could not get orders from the imperial court, so they turned to firing civilian porcelain and painting and exporting porcelain. Blue and white porcelain in this period rarely used the rich and auspicious patterns commonly found in official kiln porcelain such as dragons, phoenixes, and tangled flowers, and replaced them with landscapes, flowers and birds, opera novels, myths and legends, etc., and there were pictures of poetry, books, paintings, and prints.
In the chaotic world, ideas were bred, and the changes in porcelain also symbolized the wandering and thinking of the world at that time.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Huang Zongxi, Gu Yanwu, and Wang Fuzhi were born out of nowhere, preaching humanistic ideas and emitting a strong voice of the times. Huang Zongxi shouted, "The world is the lord, the king is the guest", he advocated replacing the emperor's "law of one family" with the "law of the world", believing that "the rule of chaos under the world is not the rise and fall of a surname, but the sorrow and happiness of all the people".
However, the Qing Dynasty followed the Ming system, and ideological enlightenment was once again fleeting with the unification of the Qing Dynasty.
▲ Qing Kangxi blue and white landscape figure figure Phoenix tail Zun. Image Source/Figureworm Creative
The destruction of the Oriental Porcelain Tower
In the thirteenth year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1748), Tang Ying, the overseer of the annual Huajia, received a will from the Qianlong Emperor to burn a special piece of porcelain in Jingdezhen.
This porcelain will gather the firing process of all over the country and the famous kilns of the dynasties, and collect various glazes in one, and the glazes decorated from top to bottom will reach as many as 15 layers, named "various glaze bottles", enjoying the reputation of "porcelain mother".
From the perspective of firing process, some of these glazes are high-temperature glazes, such as blue flowers, imitation official glazes, imitation Glaze, imitation glaze, imitation glaze, etc., which need to be roasted first, and some are low-temperature glazes, such as pastels, enamels, golds, etc., which need to be roasted later. Such a complex process can only be achieved if you are proficient in the characteristics of various glazes, and if you are not careful, you will lose your previous achievements, which is a masterpiece.
Although the firing of the "porcelain mother" is more out of the Qianlong Emperor's "temperament", its historical significance is far greater than the aesthetic significance, and it is not a simple stacking and showmanship.
The Three Dynasties of Kang Yongqian were the last prosperous era of ancient China. This porcelain heavy vessel that condenses the painstaking efforts of craftsmen everywhere shows that the Qianlong Dynasty's national strength is at its peak, the sea has risen to peace, and the Chinese porcelain that has lasted for thousands of years has reached its peak.
Because of this, a variety of glazed large bottles are now placed in the center of the Forbidden City Porcelain Museum, and their huge volume, rich glaze and gorgeous decoration are enough to attract every tourist to stop and admire.
In the Qing Dynasty, Chinese ceramics continued to be sold abroad. With the coming and going of merchant ships from Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States, Chinese porcelain has spread to all corners of the world.
▲ Qing Wang Zhicheng's "Taoye Scroll" (partial), this volume depicts the scenes of chiseling, smelting soil, making caskets, repairing tires, applying glazes, painting and other scenes in the porcelain-making process of the Qing Dynasty. Image source/network
King Louis XIV of France in the 17th century loved to wear Chinese silk and use Chinese porcelain, which made the nobles of European countries continue to follow suit. Louis XIV's court life was very luxurious, he often set up banquets at the Palace of Versailles, and exquisite Chinese porcelain gave the French royal family enough face.
Scholar Sun Ji verified that from the 16th century to the 18th century, China exported 300 million pieces of porcelain to Europe. According to the data, in the early 18th century alone, the British East India Company had orders for 25 million to 30 million pieces of porcelain in China.
France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and other countries have set up trading posts in Guangzhou. Europeans regard Chinese porcelain as a fashionable high-tech product, from pipes to crutches heads to various furnishings and utensils, which are specially ordered by craftsmen in Jingdezhen and transported to Europe.
Chinese export porcelain in the Qing Dynasty often depicted various historical events and popular culture in the West.
Foreigners came to China with rococo ornaments and paintings that were popular in Europe at that time to order porcelain, and even Western political events and strange people and strange things were preserved on Chinese porcelain, and the enamel process that prevailed in the West evolved into enamel porcelain in China.
In the Middle Ages, Europeans longed for the wealth of the East, and after countless adventures, opened up routes to the East. At the end of the 15th century, Portuguese fleets reached the waters bordering the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, bypassing the storm horn at the southernmost tip of Africa. Fleets often encountered strong winds and huge waves when passing through the Cape of Storms, but this name did not sound very auspicious, and the King of Portugal named it the "Cape of Good Hope".
Later, in order to commemorate this great event in history, the Dutch East India Company ordered plates in Jingdezhen between Yongzheng and Qianlong with the pattern of "Discover the Cape of Good Hope". However, Chinese at that time did not recognize the significance of this history.
▲ Qing Dynasty export porcelain, Irish custom. Image source/figureworm creative
In the rhyme of porcelain, there is a national fortune.
While Qing dynasty craftsmen left traces of Western culture in porcelain, China was at odds with the Western world.
During the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, he ordered that Guangzhou should trade with one port, and foreign trade should be concentrated in the thirteen lines of Guangzhou. This practice, in fact, is a retrogression and marks the closure of the Qing Dynasty.
After the 18th century, the workshops of "Guangcai" porcelain were scattered on both sides of the Pearl River, and the number of orders still rose sharply.
"Guangcai" porcelain was developed from multicolored porcelain and pastel porcelain, similar to the creation of oil paintings on porcelain, and the varieties were mostly practical daily necessities. Some merchants bought white porcelain from Jingdezhen and transported it to Guangzhou, and hired craftsmen to imitate Western painting methods to paint patterns that foreigners liked and sold them to Europe. With the popularity of "Guangcai" porcelain, many craftsmen in Jingdezhen who paint glazed pastels have also moved to Guangzhou.
"Guangcai" is the last stop in the history of ancient Chinese porcelain. At this point, the Qing Empire has quietly declined.
▲ Qing Dynasty golden tire fill painting enamel Western lady holding pot, cup, plate. Image source/figureworm creative
At that time, Europe imported a large amount of porcelain from China, resulting in a serious overstepping of trade with China and a large amount of metal currency outflow. In the eyes of some mercantilists, this is a damage to their country's economy. A late 17th-century Englishman complained that importing goods from Asia "hinders the consumption of our own manufactured goods, and this phenomenon is even more serious when purchased from the national treasury of the mainland."
As a result, the West and the Qing Dynasty fought a "trade war".
After the Industrial Revolution, as Western countries mastered porcelain-making technology and produced assembly lines in factories, the monopoly position of Chinese porcelain was broken and it was no longer a high-end scarce product. In less than 200 years, a number of well-known porcelain companies appeared in Europe, emerging in the world market, such as Germany's Meissen, Britain's Wedgewood( Wedgewood, France's Sevres, etc., China's porcelain exports began to decline.
In the fifty-eighth year of Qianlong (1793), the British Macartney delegation arrived in Beijing. In the name of congratulating the Qianlong Emperor on his eightieth birthday, they actually requested to increase the number of treaty ports and open up the Chinese market.
Macartney came this time, but also brought some of the latest inventions of the industrial revolution as a birthday gift, a total of more than 600 boxes, the entourage also has a lot of science and technology, medicine, navigation and other talents. The astronomical instruments donated by the British were stored in the planetarium built in Qianlong, which was the earliest planetarium in China, and was later burned by the British and French forces.
However, none of this was Qianlong's concern, and when he first met Ma Garni, he was entangled in what kind of etiquette the other party should use. It is said that when foreign emissaries come to "pay tribute to their subjects," they should kneel and pray.
Macartney insisted on kneeling on one knee, indicating that the British Empire was on an equal footing with the Qing Dynasty, much to Qianlong's displeasure. In the end, Macartney failed to complete the task and embarked on the journey home disappointed.
▲Qing Dynasty Guangzhou thirteen lines of landscape oil paintings. Image source/network
The glorious course of ancient Chinese porcelain began with openness and tolerance, and finally closed the country.
The Nanjing Porcelain Pagoda, built by order of the Ming Dynasty's Yongle Emperor, has shocked countless foreigners over the centuries, and its story has been widely circulated in the Western world and has become a symbol of Chinese civilization. At that time, China was once a big country admired by the whole world.
After the Opium War, modern China suffered from internal and external troubles and was deeply involved in the crisis of national subjugation. In 1856, the Dabao'en Temple Pagoda was destroyed in the war between the Qing army and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, leaving only fragments of bricks and tiles.
In the human world, there is no porcelain tower.
bibliography:
Feng Xianming: Chinese Ceramics, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2001
Ye Zhemin: History of Chinese Ceramics, Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Triptych Bookstore, 2006
Lü Chenglong, Yang Jingrong: The Essence of Forbidden City Ceramics, Forbidden City Press, 2008
Wu Zhanlei: "The History of Chinese Ceramics", Hundred Flowers Literature and Art Publishing House, 2009
Zheng Yunyun, "Culture on Porcelain: A Mysterious Link Between the Eastern and Western Conceptions of Creation", Jiangxi Fine Arts Publishing House, 2017
Tu Ruiming: History of Porcelain Picked Up, Hunan People's Publishing House, 2018