Last night, the "Splendid" dance segment in the dance drama "Five Stars Out of the East" made a stunning appearance on the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. The tunes swayed, the sleeves danced and flew, showing the great power of the country and embroidering the great Han spirit of China. This beautiful dance is inspired by a national treasure - "Five Stars Out of the East to Benefit China" arm guard brocade. Archaeologists have said that the "five-star out of the east" brocade is most likely Shujin.
Yellow desert desert
"Five stars out of the East to benefit China" came from it
In October 1995, at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains, an academic expedition team from the Sino-Japanese Nya Site found a brightly colored brocade tied to the right arm of one of the people in the tomb at the Nya Ruins site in Minfeng County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang.
The Nya Ruins, located in Minfeng County, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, are the ruins of the elite state during the Wei and Jin dynasties of the Two Han Dynasties. In a vast desert, it is on an ancient oasis that has been buried by yellow sand at the end of the Nya River, so it is also called "Pompeii of the East". Located at the crossroads of the South Silk Road, the Nya site is a place where ancient East-West cultural exchanges converged, and its excavation reveals the important history of the spread of Chinese culture to the west and the ancient East-West cultural exchanges.
The "Five-Star Out of the East Benefit China" brocade arm guard unearthed is a two-person tomb. The two men buried together wore many clothes, but the most conspicuous was the brocade tied to the right arm of one of them. At that time, the moment the coffin was opened, the brilliant colors, mysterious patterns, and magical words of the brocade immediately attracted everyone's attention.
Professor Qi Dongfang, a famous archaeologist, once said that the "five-star out of the East" brocade is most likely Shujin, and Shujin is known as "inch brocade and inch gold", and only Chang'an and Chengdu were capable of producing at that time. This brocade arm guard can represent the top level of silk weaving technology in mainland China and even in the world at that time. Some experts speculate that it is a Shujin produced during the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Han Dynasty. As a national first-class cultural relic and one of the first cultural relics banned from overseas (border) exhibition in China, it is also known as one of the greatest discoveries of Chinese archaeology in the 20th century.
Top brocade
The model of the Chengdu Laoguanshan loom was successfully restored
When the "Five Stars Out of the East Benefit China" brocade was unearthed, many scholars speculated that it was made in Shudi, but they could not find more evidence to support it. Many details of Shudi brocade need to be enriched and perfected with more materials. However, in the summer of 2021, in a Western Han period cemetery in Laoguanshan, Tianhui Town, Chengdu, the rediscovery of four models of bamboo and wood looms immersed in water became a turning point in the story.
The four models of looms from the Western Han Dynasty have been thoroughly studied by experts and confirmed to belong to jacquard looms. The power of the jacquard loom is that it can compile and store a "code" for the loom through tens of thousands of silk threads. The "selection" of workers when weaving is equivalent to programming the pattern and finally weaving a patterned brocade. The most amazing thing is that the loom model of the old Guanshan Han tomb also has two different coding technical means, sliding frame and connecting rod, and the weaving patterns are out of style. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the four loom models unearthed in the tomb of Laoguanshan Han, there are also loom figurines of different shapes, as well as textile utensils such as weft shaking wheels, warp rakes, and columns, vividly reproducing the work scene of Han dynasty brocade weaving.
In 2014, the "Compass Project" of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially established a project of "Han Dynasty Jacquard Technology Restoration Research and Display - Taking the loom excavated from the Han tomb of Laoguanshan in Chengdu as an example", and began to try to restore the Han Dynasty jacquard machine based on it. Three years later, experts from the China National Silk Museum successfully reproduced the "Five Stars Out of the East to Benefit China" brocade with a restored loom.
Chengdu Daily Jinguan News Reporter Wu Yating Intern Reporter Wang Ruyi Responsible Editor He Qitie Editor Lu Yarui Photo CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Chengdu Museum, Palace Museum