Use cultural relics to tell why Chinese civilization is immortal

Five thousand years of Chinese civilization has a long history and is broad and profound. On May 4, the Palace Museum's special exhibition "Why China" was officially concluded. The exhibition is organized by the Palace Museum, the Central Radio and Television Corporation and 29 museums in the United Nations, bringing together more than 130 national treasure-level cultural relics. The special exhibition uses the three themes of "source", "flow" and "convergence" to show the cultural characteristics of Chinese civilization that are diverse, integrated, endless and inclusive, and tells why the land of China is China, why the Chinese nation is great, and why Chinese civilization is immortal.

The special exhibition has a large span of cultural relics, from the Neolithic Era to the Qing Dynasty, spanning 5,000 years; the categories are diverse, covering stone tools, ceramics, jade, bronzes, gold and silverware, calligraphy and painting, ancient books, seals, etc.; the sources are extensive, all over the country, of which cultural relics from ethnic areas account for a large proportion. The special exhibition is of great significance for making full use of rich cultural relics resources, showing the historical process of the Chinese nation's diversified and integrated pattern, and casting a solid sense of the Chinese national community.

In the "Source" section, there are two heavy jade objects - the Hongshan Culture Jade Dragon in the Northeast Region and the Liangzhu Culture Jade Dragon in the Southeast Region. Chinese jade culture is unique in the world and bears witness to the height of early Chinese civilization. Hongshan culture is a Neolithic culture distributed in the upper reaches of the LiaoHe River in western Liaoning and southeastern Inner Mongolia, with developed jade tools, C-shaped jade dragons, jade pig dragons, and Gouyun-shaped jade pendants as their common shapes. Hongshan cultural jade is the peak of the development of prehistoric jade, especially the C-shaped jade dragon is the most famous. In this special exhibition, this C-shaped jade dragon has a smooth body, a long kiss on the head, a mane flying, a curled body, a vivid shape, and a beautiful carving. As an image of the early Chinese dragon, the jade dragon has shown many characteristics of the mature dragon shape.

Located in the Yuhang District of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the Liangzhu site is a model for archaeological evidence of the history of Chinese civilization. Liangzhu culture jade is developed, and Yu Chun and Yu Bi are its important representatives. This piece of jade in the exhibition was excavated from Tomb No. 12 of the Anti-Mountain Site, with an inner circle and outer square, a regular shape, a total of three sections, a simplified carving of the god and man beast face pattern, the ornamentation is similar to the "three-layer pattern" of later bronzes, the production process has used drawing, pipe drilling, sawing and other techniques, the ground-reducing bas-relief technique, the dense yin line carving, the fine instrument surface polishing and cutting technology, all of which show the high achievement of Liangzhu jade.

▲Yu Chun Neolithic Collection of Zhejiang Provincial Museum. (The pictures in this article are from China Nationalities Daily)

In the stage of origin of Chinese civilization, it not only has the pluralistic characteristics of being full of stars in the sky, but also has the inherent unity of frequent exchanges and continuous integration. The two jade cultural relics clearly present the grand scene of Chinese civilization in the Liao River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin. Since the 1980s, the archaeological genealogy of early Chinese civilization has been continuously determined and improved, and the multi-regional, unbalanced, continuous and integrated characteristics of Neolithic archaeological culture have become empirical evidence of the pattern of pluralism and integration of the Chinese nation.

After the development and convergence of the origin stage, about 4,000 years ago, the Xia, Shang and Three Dynasties dynasties were established in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. Several of the Shang Dynasty carved turtle shells and cattle bones in the exhibition are outstanding representatives of the Shang Dynasty civilization, and the oracle bones inscribed on them are the earliest self-contained Chinese characters in China. The bronze He Zun in the exhibition is the most important of the Western Zhou bronzes, with 122 inscriptions on the inner bottom, of which the word "Zhaozi China" is the earliest written record of the word "China".

▲He Zun Western Zhou Baoji Bronze Ware Museum Collection.

In the development of the Chinese nation, the establishment of the Qin and Han dynasties, a great unified dynasty in Chinese history, is of great importance. Dynasties need to operate on the basis of a series of state institutions and systems. The Shang martingale Fangsheng and the Qin Dynasty "half two" Fang Kong qian in the exhibition are representatives of the Qin Dynasty's "book with the same text, the same car on the same track, and the same line", and the implementation of the political, economic and cultural unification system. These two cultural relics not only provide first-hand materials for understanding and understanding the Qin system of weights and measures and currency, but more importantly, the state system and various systems of maintaining unity established by Qin were inherited and developed by the Han Dynasty, and then ran through more than two thousand years of Chinese history.

In the history of China, the "flow" of cultures of different regions and different nationalities has continuously merged into the vein of the Chinese nation and jointly created a splendid Chinese civilization. In this regard, the exhibition has a profound expression. For example, the gold medal ornament of animal bite bucket pattern in the exhibit shows the animals biting and fighting each other in a flat relief way, showing the cultural style of the northern grassland area, reflecting the interaction between the Central Plains and the north since the Warring States to the Qin and Han Dynasties. The bronze case of cattle and tigers excavated from the Lijiashan site in Yunnan province is a sacrificial vessel, depicting the vivid image of two cattle and one tiger, showing the ancient Dian culture from the Warring States to the Qin and Han Dynasties, in which the cattle and tigers have the symbolic meaning of wealth and life, as well as authority and strength, respectively.

Also on display is a "Five-Star Out of the East and Li China" brocade guard, which was found in an ancient tomb at the Site of Niya in Minfeng County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang. The arm guard is made of brocade as the face, white silk as the lining, the brocade surface is a typical Chinese pattern such as cloud pattern, birds and beasts, ward off evil spirits and red and white circular pattern representing the sun and the moon, and more importantly, there are eight Chinese characters woven in the pattern, "Five Stars Out of the East and Li China". The so-called five stars refer to the five planets of gold, wood, water, fire and earth, and the "five-star gathering" is a very rare astronomical wonder. The site of Niya is the seat of the Jing dynasty in the Han and Jin Dynasties, one of the thirty-six kingdoms of the Western Regions recorded in historical records, and a necessary place for the southern route of the Silk Road. During the Western Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian sent two missions to the Western Regions, opening up contacts and exchanges between the Central Plains Dynasty and the Western Regions. The Government of the Western Han Dynasty established the Western Regions Capital Protectorate to administer the Western Regions, and the jurisdiction also included the Jingzhi State. This brocade is believed to have been woven exclusively for the Han Dynasty royals by Shu brocade craftsmen in present-day Chengdu, Sichuan, but eventually appeared in Han Dynasty tombs in Xinjiang, indicating a close relationship between the ancient Jingzhi kingdom and the Han Dynasty.

In addition, the exhibits "King of Jingui Yiqiang" and "Marquis of Jingui Yiqiang", the Sui Dynasty Hu people eat cake and ride camel figurines, the Song Dali State Silver Gilded Gold-plated Gold-winged Bird Statue, and the Yuan Dynasty Bashi Bawen Tiger Rune Round Plate, etc., all show the mutual influence, absorption and inheritance of various ethnic groups in culture, reflect the evolution and development process of China as a unified multi-ethnic country, and show the historical facts of all ethnic groups jointly writing Chinese history and creating Chinese culture.

▲ Hu people eat cakes and ride camel figurines in the Sui Dynasty, Shanxi Museum collection.

▲Basi Ba Wen Tiger Fu Round Plate Yuan Dynasty Gansu Provincial Museum Collection.

Let cultural relics speak, let history speak, let culture speak, and the "Why China" special exhibition can be called an important practice. Modern Chinese archaeology began in 1921, after a hundred years, archaeologists have found hundreds of millions of precious cultural relics on the land of China, and the current number of state-owned movable cultural relics in the mainland has reached 108 million pieces (sets). To a certain extent, cultural relics show a kind of historical "presence", show the content not recorded in the documentary materials, more truly and intuitively present the historical appearance, which is a physical witness of Chinese history and Chinese civilization, and has an irreplaceable and important role in the development history of the pattern of pluralism and integration of the Chinese nation. (End) (Source: China Nationalities Daily)

Author/Lei Hongji

Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Day