Publishing a catalog accompanying an exhibition is a common practice in many museums, and there is not much new idea. However, it is not easy to creatively transform an exhibition into a historical teaching aid that has both academic height and cultural relic appreciation value. This requires the curator’s profound theoretical accumulation and grand narrative ability. “Clouds over the West Sea: The Silk Road Qinghai Road from the 6th to 8th Centuries” recently published by Zhejiang University Press is a classic work of this kind of transformation. It should be said that this book has greatly enriched and broadened the scope of the exhibition of the same name, and provided China with The construction of museum exhibition system has made useful exploration and successful practice.
What is particularly valuable is that this book not only deciphers the Tuyuhun, a very important but unknown ethnic minority in the northwest on the Silk Road, but also explains the historical status of the Qinghai Road on the Silk Road through pictures and texts for the first time. It is presented to readers in a form that is both a selection of cultural relics and a collection of historical materials.
In July 2022, the China National Silk Museum and a number of domestic cultural and museum institutions organized a large-scale exhibition called “Clouds Over the West Sea: The Silk Road Qinghai Road from the 6th to 8th Centuries”. The exhibition revisits the history of the Tuyuhun Kingdom, and based on the Tuyuhun-Tubo-related archaeological discoveries in the Haixi region in the past 40 years, it displays a number of cultural relics with extremely high academic value and exquisite ornamental effects from the 6th to 8th centuries (including the Tubo period). ) The life, culture and art history of the Tuyuhun people reveal the significant contribution of Qinghai Road in connecting Eastern and Western cultural exchanges.
Tuyuhun is one of the ethnic groups in ancient northwest my country. At the beginning of the 4th century AD, the Tuyuhun tribe separated from Murong Xianbei in Liaodong and moved westward to the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia to this day. At the end of Yongjia in the Western Jin Dynasty, it went south from Yinshan Mountain, passed through Longshan Mountain, and ended up in the northwest of Linxia, Gansu Province. Soon, it developed south and west, ruling today’s southern Gansu, northwest Sichuan and Qingtou – for example, accidentally got her pregnant. Wait, he always felt that it was better for the two of them to keep their distance. But who would have thought she would cry? He also cried until the pear blossoms bloomed and it rained, and the Di, Qiang and other tribes in Xinhai and other places.
When Ye Yan, the grandson of Tuyuhun, established a political power, he took his grandfather Tuyuhun’s name as his surname, as well as the name of the country and the name of the tribe. At its peak, its territory started from present-day southern Gansu and northwest Sichuan in the east, to present-day southern Qinghai in the south, to Ruoqiang and Qiemo in present-day Xinjiang in the west, and connected to the Hexi Corridor across the Qilian Mountains in the north. Its later political center was 15 miles west of present-day Qinghai Lake. It is named Fuqi City.
The Tuyuhun regime lasted for more than 300 years from Ye Yanshi to 663 AD when it was ruled by Tibet. After that, the Tuyuhun people scattered in places such as present-day Qinghai, Hexi in Gansu, eastern Xinjiang, and present-day Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, northern Shaanxi, Shanxi, and northern Hebei. It was not until the Northern Song Dynasty that the activities of the Tuyuhun people disappeared from Chinese historical records.
Due to various reasons, the glorious history of Tuyuhun and its importance on the Silk Road were downplayed until the Xuewei No. 1 Tomb of the Dulan Hot Water Tombs was officially excavated. This tomb is a high-level tomb with the most complete structure and clearest layout discovered so far on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. A large number of tombs have been preserved.The exquisite relics, some of which have rich craftsmanship and decorative patterns with strong ethnic styles such as Sasanian Persia in Western Asia and Sogdian in Central Asia. This tomb had been robbed before, and the public security department recovered more than 600 exquisite cultural relics, most of which were gold and silverware. After scientific excavation, 1,207 pieces (sets) of gold and silverware were unearthed. There are seals, containers, ornaments, horse gear, coverings, friezes and coffin decorations, etc., with a wide range of categories, rich connotations, diverse shapes and different decorations, which strongly proves the important role of the Qinghai Road on the Silk Road and provides a basis for the study of cultural exchanges and “Mom thinks you don’t have to worry at all. Your mother-in-law is good to you, and that’s enough. What my mother is most worried about is that your mother-in-law will belittle herself and rely on her to enslave you.” The integration of the body and ethnicity of the elders provides a new and valuable reference. The key to valuable information is that the unearthed seals confirmed the identity of the owner of the gold and silverware, Tuyuhun, the “Achai King” during his lifetime. This provides a key physical example for interpreting the relationship between the Tang Dynasty, Tubo and Tuyuhun. It is an indispensable and valuable resource in the study of the Silk Road. material.
Tell the story of the Qinghai Road of the Silk Road well, and recreate the appearance of Tuyuhun on the Qinghai Road – thus, “Clouds over the West Sea” became the first major exhibition to reproduce the history of Tuyuhun. The exhibition restores the daily life of the Tuyuhun people and reproduces the important position of Tuyuhun in the history of the development of the Chinese nation. From the intuitive viewing of cultural relics to text narration, as the editor-in-chief, Zhao Feng needs to give readers a clear background of the times. Therefore, his preface “Revisiting Tuyuhun: A Past of the Silk Road Qinghai Road” starts from the preliminary compilation of Dulan silk, Relevant displays, the concentrated appearance of Haixi cultural relics, and the curation process of the Qinghai Exhibition were introduced in detail.
Since the preliminary excavation results of the No. 1 Tomb of Hotwater in Dulan, Qinghai in the mid-1980s, Mr. Zhao Feng has been paying attention to the cultural relics unearthed in Dulan, especially Dulan silk. It was his persistence and professionalism that made the exhibition supported by nine cultural and museum institutions possible. At the same time, due to his vision and influence, he was able to accurately organize highly valuable research papers on the latest archaeological discoveries in Tuyuhun when editing the book, ensuring the academic authority of the book.
The book is divided into three parts. The thesis is in the first part, which includes the works of six experts including Rong Xinjiang, Han Jianhua, Tong Tao, and Chen Guoke, including “The Tuyuhun Road of the Silk Road as Seen in Unearthed Documents” and “The Heavenly Horse Came from Haixi— —40 Years of Archeology of the Dulan Hotwater Tombs” “A New Exploration on the Site Selection Layout and Funeral Customs of Tubo Tombs in Qinghai” “Master Lan——” Xi Shixun tried to express his sincerity, but was interrupted by Master Lan raising his hand. There are many articles including “Investigation and Excavation of Tuyuhun Royal Tombs in Tang Dynasty in Wuwei, Gansu”, “Overview of Dulan System Gold and Silverware”, “Variety, Patterns and Periodization of Dulan Silk”. It can be said that the authors of these papers are the most authoritative experts in the field. Most of them are archaeologists who have been working in the field for many years. It is their archaeological excavations and scientific research that have made the original historical appearance of Tuyuhun increasingly clear. The unearthing of a large number of exquisite cultural relics has made the prosperity and diversity of the Silk Road Qinghai Road more concrete, and also clarified the Silk Road Henan Road, Tuyuhun Road, Qinghai Road between roadsrelation. At the same time, these articles reflect the research results of the representative cultural relics in the second part of the catalogue. From them, readers can see that when Tuyuhun controlled the Qinghai region, he had diverse relationships with the Central Plains culture, Sogdian, Persian culture and Indian Buddhist culture along the Silk Road. Cultural exchange and integration reproduce the process of multi-ethnic integration under the influence of Silk Road civilization.
The value of this book also lies in systematically sorting out the history of Tuyuhun through unearthed cultural relics for the first time, as well as the role of Qinghai Road in the cultural exchange between the East and the West. These are reflected in the second part of the catalogue. “Majestic in Haixi”, “Meat in Brocade”, “Relics of Confucius”, “Archaeological Records”, “Picturesque” and the conclusion “The Significance of Qinghai Road” are all supported by 191 pieces (groups) of cultural relics, especially silk and gold and silverware. more prominent. A particularly unique piece of gold jewelry in the form of a cavalry gun is featured in the catalogue. The whole piece of decoration is light and thin, and the figure on the surface is majestic, galloping on horseback, with a full bow and strings, wearing a mountain-shaped crown, two braids hanging down the back of the head, a mustache, big earrings, narrow sleeves and a lapel with beaded pattern. The costumes are quite different from the decorations of Turkic, Persian, Rouran, Xianbei and other figures in this period. The author believes that this gold medal is decorated with a prince wearing a crown, a single earring, and a tadpole beard. The figure has a deep echo with the shape of the prince on the sarcophagus bed of the Sogdians who entered China in the Northern Dynasties collected by the Miho Museum of Art in Japan. This horse-shooting gold medal is currently the only image of Gaida that appears in Dulan made of gold medals. Based on the analysis of the etiquette system at that time, it should be a decoration on the Tuguhun royal family, or it may be a diplomatic exchange between Gaida and Tuyuhun. Gifts or national gifts are important decorations at the national level. They express the diplomatic exchanges between the Tuyuhun Dynasty and the relatively powerful Gaida Empire in Central Asia at that time. They provide information for studying the history, migration routes and development trends of the Gaida during the Tuyuhun period. Important reference.
This book “Long Clouds in the West Sea” edited and published for the exhibition of the same name not only inspires museum people, but also contributes to the academic community a collection of research papers on the Qinghai Road of the Silk Road and the Tuyuhun people. Appreciation and interpretation can help us deeply understand the splendor of the diverse civilizations along the Silk Road.
(Author: Zhang Jingwen, a doctoral candidate at the School of Marxism, Lanzhou University)