#头条创作挑战赛#
"Looking northwest at Chang'an, pity countless mountains." The famous sentence of the Southern Song Dynasty poet Xin Qiji, I took it as the title of this book - Wang'an. I imagined that the two stone horses of the Zhaoling Tomb of the Tang Dynasty were far away in a foreign land, looking west at Chang'an, when they would return, far away; I imagined the frustration and helplessness of tens of millions of Chinese cultural relics lost overseas who were far away from their homeland and could not return. "Looking at Chang'an" may be able to express the voice of the Chinese national treasure living abroad.
Look at Chang'an, miss Luoyang. In the history of China's capitals, Chang'an and Luoyang were the capitals of the Han and Tang dynasties, the places where the emperors lived in Beijing, and they were the symbols of China's splendid civilization and Chinese culture, and most of the stories told in this book are related to them. Legend has it that in 1928, a long-term rain caused the field in the northeast of Luoyang Jincun to sink, and the Jincun tomb was discovered. In fact, the tomb had been excavated as early as the previous winter. "Has Huai Luguang been to Jincun? It focuses on the historical fact that the precious cultural relics of the Warring States Tomb in Jincun, Luoyang were stolen and excavated from 1927 to 1931.
The Royal Ontario Museum in Canada exhibits some of the artifacts excavated from Chuanjin Village
During the Republic of China, the Han tombs in Zhoukou and Xuchang in Henan were destroyed. A kind of hollow portrait brick pillar was unearthed in the tomb as a building material, which was loved by Westerners and scattered in some museums in Britain, France, the United States, Canada and other countries. "One Lift" and Two Portrait Pillars explores the brick pillars of the Han Dynasty, which are the star exhibits in the Chinese Pavilion of the British Museum. After interpretation, we can see that this kind of brick column not only has the practicality of supporting wall bricks, but also plays a role in the ideological concepts of the town tomb to ward off evil spirits and protect the tranquility of the tomb.
Portrait column on display in the Chinese Pavilion of the British Museum
While a large number of ancient tombs in the hinterland of the Central Plains were tragically excavated, the cave temple statues, which were an important carrier of the Buddhist beliefs of the ancient ancestors in the mainland, were also looted arbitrarily. In the 10-30s of the 20th century, some foreigners colluded with Chinese antique dealers to steal Buddhist statues from Xiangtangshan Grottoes in Hebei, Tianlongshan Grottoes in Shanxi Province and Longmen Grottoes in Henan, resulting in the loss of a large number of fine Buddhist carvings overseas. "The Solemnity of the Buddha Kingdom" describes the Buddhist statues from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Liaojin Dynasty in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (hereinafter referred to as the "Penn Museum"), such as statues of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, Heavenly Kings, and Lux Warriors, reflecting the religious beliefs and artistic attainments of the people from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Liaojin Dynasty.
If the Buddhist statues embody a certain piety and perseverance of the ancients, then the stone carvings on the mausoleum and the terracotta figurines in the tomb show the glory and extraordinaryness of the tomb owner during his lifetime. The glory of the Tang Dynasty is not only recorded in the history books, but also more intuitively expressed through the cultural relics that have survived to this day. In 1913, two of the six horses of the Zhaoling Tomb of Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, which stood silently on the northern slope of Jiuzhi Mountain in Liquan County (now Liquan County) in Shaanxi Province for thousands of years, were smuggled down the mountain. In 1918, they appeared in the exhibition halls of the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, USA. What kind of mysterious journey have they embarked on in the past five years? "Zhaoling Stone Horse Night Sky Hiss" attempts to interpret this legendary story. From 2002 to 2003, archaeologists carried out a large-scale excavation of the site of Simamen in the north of Zhaoling, and cleaned up the stone seat of the six horses, which provided a scientific basis for understanding the original environment of the six horses in Zhaoling.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Bianluo Railway (the predecessor of the Longhai Railway) was built, destroying many ancient tombs at the southern foot of Luoyang Mountain along the line. One of the Tang tombs unearthed brightly glazed three-color figurines, but they were lost overseas. "Who is Liu Tingxun" explains the origin of a group of Tang Dynasty three-color figurines in the British Museum. In the past, some scholars believed that these figurines were unearthed in the tomb of "Liu Tingxun" in the Tang Dynasty in Luoyang. This book hooks and sinks and hides, and it is verified that the owner of the tomb of these three-color figurines should be "Liu Tingxun", and also found the epitaph stone of Liu Tingxun now stored in the Kaifeng City Museum, which describes the tortuous and vivid legendary experience of Liu Tingxun, a loyal general. Once upon a time, the three-color figurines and the stone were buried in the same tomb, but today they are thousands of miles apart, which is embarrassing.
The National Museum exhibits the Tang Dynasty three-color civil figurines and their details from the British Museum
Unlike the Tang Dynasty three-color glazed pottery horses in the British Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in the United States has a Tang Dynasty painted female equestrian figurine. "Girl" is a case study of this equestrian female figurine unearthed in the Guanzhong area of Shaanxi Province, which further explores the changes in the aesthetic fashion of the Tang Dynasty, and the change from the closed nature of dress in the early Tang Dynasty to the openness of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, reflecting the inclusive, open and inclusive atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has a Tang Dynasty equestrian figurine
Whether it is a batch of three-color figurines or a painted female equestrian figurine, they all win by color, and the body is tall, highlighting the strong national strength of the Li Tang Dynasty, and the smaller bronze mirror, with its aesthetic shape, fine ornamentation, and metal texture, also attracts the attention of overseas museums and collectors. The Izumiya Hiroko Museum in Japan has more than 200 bronze mirrors from the Warring States, Han Dynasty, Tang and Song dynasties, etc., with rich types and types. "Accepting the World in the Palm of Your Hand" starts with the bronze mirrors of the Warring States and Han and Tang dynasties collected by the museum, and researches some of the bronze mirrors with animal themes of the Warring States period, the portrait mirrors of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the character mirrors of the Tang Dynasty and the special craft mirrors that were lost overseas. From myth to history, from history to reality, the gradual change of the theme of the bronze mirror, on the back of the mirror presents its own distinctive ornaments and images, faithfully recording the traces of the changes of the times.
With the bronze mirror, the utensils containing the mirror will more truly and intuitively reflect the treasure of the ancients for the bronze mirror. "Mirrors and Moons" explores the naming and function of the Northern Song Dynasty silver mirror boxes in the British Museum. My suggestion that this box is a silver mirror has been affirmed by British scholars, and has been fully demonstrated in the new exhibition.
The British Museum has a Song Dynasty silver mirror box and its details
The completion and publication of some of the above-mentioned research monographs are closely related to my academic further study and work in the past ten years. From January to June 2012, I was fortunate to receive a grant from the National Museum of China to visit the University of Pennsylvania with the title of "Investigation of Chinese Han and Tang Dynasty Cultural Relics in the University of Pennsylvania Museum", and conducted a systematic and in-depth observation and research on the ancient Chinese cultural relics in the Penn Museum. He also visited several museums in the eastern United States that have a rich collection of Chinese cultural relics, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Freer Museum of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, etc., to see a large number of exquisite Chinese cultural relics and treasures up close. I learned a lot from this trip to the United States. During his visit, at the invitation of the editorial department of "Knowledge of Literature and History", he wrote four articles for the journal, which were serialized in the "Special Attention" column of "Knowledge of Literature and History", introducing some of the Chinese cultural relics in the collection of the Penn Museum to readers in the form of pictures and texts. After returning to China, he completed and published a research report. The "Solemnity of the Buddha Kingdom" and "The Night Sky of the Zhaoling Stone Horse" selected in this book are the embodiment of the results of the visit in 2012.
Since 2013, I have participated in the compilation of the catalogue entries for the large-scale book series "The Essence of Ancient Chinese Cultural Relics in Overseas Collections" compiled by scholars from the National Museum of China, and have undertaken the selection and writing of cultural relics for the volumes of "British Museum Volume", "French Guimet Museum Volume", "French Cernuschi Museum Volume", "Nelson-Akins Museum of Art Volume in the United States", "San Francisco Asian Art Museum Volume in the United States", and "Izumiya Hakukokan Volume in Japan" and "Royal Ontario Museum Volume in Canada" Codification Project Leader. These daily tasks, which are closely related to the study of ancient artifacts, have created many academic opportunities that are difficult for others to access.
In 2013, the National Museum of China began to compile the Izumiya Hakukokan Volume, and I was responsible for the revision, supplementation, and editing of some of the cultural relics. In April of the following year, I paid a working visit to the Tokyo branch of the Izumiya Hakukokan in Japan, where I met with the curators, Mr. Kominami Ichiro and Mamoru Hirokawa, and had a full exchange on the issue of co-publication of the volume. After more than a year of hard work by both parties, the Izumiya Volume was published in 2016. I was impressed by the rich collection of beautifully cast bronzes. In particular, the museum has more than 200 ancient Chinese bronze mirrors, which are self-contained and quite distinctive. The article "Accepting the World in the Palm of Your Hand" in this book uses these bronze mirrors as a starting point to give an overview of some Chinese bronze mirrors scattered overseas, and also puts forward some academic views and opinions.
In July 2015, the writing of the British Museum Volume was launched, and I wrote entries on 19 items (groups) of artifacts from the British Museum's collection. In November 2018, I went to London, England with my colleagues to visit the British Museum and observe the Chinese cultural relics displayed in the museum, which created good conditions for further in-depth research. From 2017 to 2020, I published three papers on ancient Chinese artefacts in the British Museum's collection[1], and my views have been fully affirmed by my colleagues at the British Museum.
In October 2017, I undertook the task of writing some cultural relics entries in the volume of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA, and made an in-depth case analysis of a painted female equestrian figurine from the Tang Dynasty. In September 2020, I participated in the "Ancient Chinese Costume and Cultural Relics Research Forum" held by the National Museum, and submitted and read a paper entitled "Appreciation of Tang Equestrian Female Warriors in the Collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco". The "Girl's Bun" selected for this book is derived from this article.
In April 2018, I became the editor-in-chief of the volume of the Royal Ontario Museum of Canada volume, and began to select artifacts and organize a team to compile the volume. During the Republican period, the Canadian missionary Huai Luguang, as an agent of the Royal Ontario Museum, purchased a large number of cultural relics in China and shipped them back to China. Among them, many cultural relics unearthed from the Warring States Tomb in Luoyang Jincun are collected in the Royal Ontario Museum. The first part of the book, "Has Huai Luguang been to Jincun?" This is what I have gained after more than 30 years of continuous attention to the cultural relics of the Jincun diaspora.
Most of the eight essays included in this book are case studies of ancient Chinese cultural relics in overseas museums, and the main research methods used can be summarized into three types.
First, we should adopt an empirical approach, and say what we say from one material. The conclusion is not predetermined, but is derived after comparing and analyzing a large number of basic materials. The comparative method is also commonly used, "up and down, left and right", "up and down" is a vertical axis, that is, the time axis, and "left and right" is a horizontal axis, that is, the space axis. The object of study is placed in the coordinate axis and the nuanced comparison is made, which leads to relatively objective conclusions. In terms of materials that can be compared, archaeological excavations are preferred, followed by excavations, and then heirlooms. Focusing on the research theme, we collect and use a wide range of physical materials of different materials.
Second, take the problem as the center and strive to solve the basic problems about cultural relics collections, one is the time problem, such as the production age, excavation time, periodization, etc.; The second is the space problem, such as the production area, the place of excavation, the partition, etc. The intersection of time and space to construct a space-time framework for the collection is the primary issue. There is also the issue of the naming of the collections. Third, "make a big fuss", from the small to the big, the entry point is small, and the foothold is broad. "Discussing history with things, seeing people through things", this is undoubtedly a process of argumentation from reality to fiction, just as Mr. Meng Wentong said: "Bringing reality with fiction is also a method of learning." Historical data is real, but thinking is virtual. There is nothing real and false, and it is a dead snake. ”
These research methods are simple and practical that I have summarized from my long-term writing practice after carefully studying and comprehending the research experience of many previous scholars, and they should be regarded as the height of the research methodology of museum collections. The eight articles in this book cover ancient Chinese cultural relics spanning a long period of time, from the Warring States and Han Dynasty to the Northern Wei, Tang and Song dynasties, including bronzes, jades, gilded bronze Buddha statues, silverware, three-color figurines, stone carvings, etc. The cultural relics do not seem to have much to do with each other, but they interpret a common theme in different ages, different shapes, different materials, and different angles, that is, the diversity of ancient Chinese material culture and the breadth and profundity of ancient civilization. They share the same fate, wandering alone and in a foreign land during the turbulent late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. However, we must also hold the awareness that they are only the tip of the iceberg, and tens of millions of Chinese cultural relics have been lost overseas, and my research is difficult to cover all kinds.
I have selected some of the Chinese cultural relics that have been lost overseas, like pearls scattered all over the world, and tried to connect them with a theme as a silk thread, showing readers and friends a beautiful necklace that shines against the background of China's ancient and heavy history. We are looking forward to their future. "The green mountains can't cover it, after all, it flows eastward."
Looking at Chang'an: Chinese Stories from Overseas Museum Collections