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blueiskewl · 4 months

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‘Faces of Sanxingdui’: Bronze Age Relics Shed Light on Mysterious Ancient Kingdom

A golden face with patinaed turquoise eyes stares out of the darkness. Illuminated around it stand three other bronze heads — some have flat tops, others round — all looked over by a giant bronze statue almost 9 feet high. All have the same piercing, angular eyes.

There’s something about the “Faces of Sanxingdui” — as this collection of sculptures is being billed — that feels both familiar and alien. Currently on display at the Hong Kong Palace Museum, they may appear Mayan or Aztec to the untrained eye, but these over-3,000-year-old sculptures weren’t unearthed anywhere near Mesoamerica’s ancient civilizations. They were discovered on China’s Chengdu Plain, at an archeological dig site called Sanxingdui (which translates as “three star mound”).

Thought to be the largest and oldest site left by the Shu kingdom, a civilization in southwestern China once only hinted at in myths and legends, Sanxingdui was not discovered until the 1920s, when a farmer stumbled across objects while digging an irrigation ditch. The site has since been found to contain the ruins of an ancient city made up of residences, sacrificial pits and tombs enclosed by high dirt walls. Archaeologists from the Sanxingdui Museum say the city was established some 4,800 to 2,800 years ago, until it was abandoned around 800 BC for unknown reasons.

The Chinese government has long promoted Sanxingdui as evidence of the country’s long, uninterrupted history — with the discoveries included in history textbooks for more than a decade. And while thousands of visitors have already flocked to the groundbreaking exhibition in Hong Kong, some analysts suggest that the items are also being used to support the Chinese government’s vision of national identity.

The mysterious and talented Shu

The Shu kingdom, which emerged in the Sichuan basin during the Bronze Age, is believed to have developed independently of the Yellow River Valley societies traditionally considered the cradle of Chinese civilization. Its inhabitants created exquisitely crafted bronze, jade, gold and ceramic objects, depicting fantastical beasts, kings, gods and shamans with bulging eyes and enlarged ears.

Around 120 of the items are currently on display in Hong Kong, and it’s the first time many of these objects, most of which were excavated between 2019 and 2022, have been showcased outside Sichuan province.

Remarkably, the sculptures predate the Terracotta Army, a collection of earthenware statues depicting the armies of China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang, by at least 1,000 years. Wang Shengyu, an assistant curator at the Palace Museum said the objects are far more advanced, imaginative, and artistic than those being produced anywhere else in China at that time.

“You can tell that it’s very sculptural and very artsy,” Wang said at the exhibition opening, pointing to a roughly 1-foot-tall bronze figure whose fantastical, braided hair extends out to three times the height of its body and, had it not been broken, would stretch much further. “You can imagine how magnificent it was. From above his nose and all the way up, it would’ve been over 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) tall, according to the fragments (archeologists) found. The end of the pigtail is on his shoulder.”

Little is known about the Shu kingdom other than what’s been discovered on the 3.6-square-kilometer (1.4-square-mile) site outside Chengdu. There is no evidence of a written Shu language, and historical literature contains scant information about its culture other than a handful of myths and legends, including a reference to a Shu king called Can Cong whose eyes were said to have protruded — perhaps explaining why so many of the 13,000 relics recovered from the site feature bulging eyes.

After the Shu state was conquered by the Qin dynasty in 316 BC, Shu culture was “buried” under the “mainstream” culture that later emerged on China’s central plain, Chinese authorities wrote in a 2013 UNESCO submission seeking to have Sanxingdui and two nearby archeological sites recognized as World Heritage Sites. They are currently on UNESCO’s “tentative list.”

Since 1986, eight excavated pits at Sanxingdui have yielded giant masks of gods with bulbous, insect-like eyes and protruding ears, mythical creatures with gaping mouths and an almost 4-meter-tall (13-foot) bronze “tree of life” sculpture decorated with ornaments like a Christmas tree. All the items were found shattered, burned and buried, leading experts to believe the pits were used for ritual sacrifices. Some have now been painstakingly re-constructed by archaeologists. “It took 10 years to reconstruct the tree,” said Wang Shengyu, an assistant curator at the museum who helped curate the exhibition.

That tree is not on show in Hong Kong, as it is considered too precious to send abroad, but a section of one of six others discovered and ornaments are on display at the museum, as well as a 3D holographic projection of what experts think it would have looked like – its layers and branches adorned with birds, flowers, fruit, dragons, bells as well as jade and gold foil ornaments. The set are thought to have been part of a theater space.

‘Historical myth’ of a continuous civilization

The exhibition places these items in the context of other ancient civilizations and includes the Shu among the many societies to have existed in the country’s “5,000-year history.” According to a press release from organizers, museum and Hong Kong government officials at the opening stressed the “continuity, inventiveness, unity, inclusiveness and emphasis on peace and harmony” of Chinese history.

Henry Tang, chairman of the governing body behind the West Kowloon Cultural District (where the Palace Museum is located) and a former candidate for Hong Kong’s top leadership role, said in a statement that the district and museum are looking to “promote cultural and artistic exchanges between China and the world, ‘tell China’s story well’, and strengthen the public’s cultural self-confidence.”

But the narrative that the Shu kingdom was innately Chinese is contentious, according to Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for China Studies at US think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Over the past few decades, the (Chinese Communist Party) has been trying to push a historical myth that all the peoples who have ever lived inside the current borders of the People’s Republic are ‘Chinese,’” he said over email.

“The basic idea is that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) encompasses people who naturally belong together and therefore, from today’s standpoint, form a nation. Hence any effort to have autonomy or even independence is taboo — it runs against history.”

The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, and its government has often used China’s continuous history as evidence that ethnic groups such as the Tibetans and the Uyghurs have always belonged to China.

Johnson said that there was little support for the idea that civilizations along the Yellow River had much in common with those in the Sichuan Basin.

“They have commonalities but are not the same — just as ancient Assyrians and Phoenicians and Greeks weren’t the same, even if they shared certain things in common,” he said, adding: “sponsoring these kinds of exhibitions are popular and win the government credit.”

When asked to comment, the Hong Kong Palace Museum said the exhibition was “curated based on academic and archaeological research” and that it reinforces its mission to deepen audiences’ “understanding of the lives and cultures of various regions and ethnic groups as well as exchanges among them in ancient China, which have contributed to the magnificence of China’s civilization and its ‘diversity in unity’ pattern of development.”

By Christy Choi.

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yuniverjo · 24 days

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#art #drawing #illustration #artists on tumblr #digital painting #character design #character illustration #character art #frog assassin #wuxia #ancient chinese #wuxia hero #国风

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that-dreaming-dragon · 2 years

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About Chinese Dragon Mythos

While looking up myths and folklore about dragons with fur and/or feathered wings, I came across these texts. I happen to be fluent in both scripts of the Chinese language and was able to pull information up to share these with.

DISCLAIMER: I'm just looking up old Chinese writings and translating them, in no way, shape, or form do I believe they are the gospel. I will eat anyone that tells anyone they are not dragons for being different than their ideal concept of dragons.

In <Compoendium of Materia Medica : Winged>(1)

"龙者鳞虫之长。王符言其形有九似：头似驼，角似鹿，眼似兔，耳似牛，项似蛇，腹似蜃，鳞似鲤，爪似鹰，掌似虎，是也。其背有八十一鳞，具九九阳数。其声如戛铜盘。口旁有须髯，颔下有明珠，喉下有逆鳞。头上有博山，又名尺木，龙无尺木不能升天。呵气成云，既能变水，又能变火。"

Translation available with my edits/addons in brackets

The dragon is the king of reptiles, Wangfu say it is similar to the nine animals: Head like a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, ears like cattle, [snake-like neck], belly like clam, the scales of a carp, the claws of a hawk, the palm of a tiger. There are 81 scales on the back[, which is a positive number of 9x9(2)]. Sound is like beating gongs. A beard near the mouth, a pearl on chin, [inverted scale] under the neck. [On the dragon's forehead there is a shape like Mount Bo(3), also called chǐ mù(4), without chǐ mù, a dragon cannot fly. It's breath becomes clouds], It can produce water, and it also generates fire.

- from https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-dragon-in-Chinese-mythology?share=1

On Responsive Dragon/Ying long 應龍

As documented in “Tales of strange matters” (shuyiji) “horned dragon in 500 years, a thousand, and they become yonglong” it is a pinnacle of “(shape)shift dragon”, therefore it grew wings.

It served under the yellow emperor, and during the event of The Great Yu Subdue the Flood, the yinglong, with one great sweep of its tail, redirect and created a new river. This divine dragon is also named yellow dragon, yellow dragon is yinglong. Yinglong has feature of born with a pair of wings, scaled body spiked spine, large and long head, lip, nose, eyes, ears are all small, large eye frame, high eyebrow, sharp teeth, protrude forehead, thin neck large belly, long tail, four strong limbs, as if a winged alligator.

You can often see depictions of yinglong on Warring State era jade sculptures, Han dynasty's stone sculptures, tapestry, and painted utensils. "Dragon has nine hatchlings, every one of them unique." In ancient times, nine is an extremely high number, in here, it is not the exact number. It is a representation that the divine dragon has many children. And in the early era, the divine dragon also includes zhulong (candle dragon), goulong (hook dragon), kuilong, and there are also the four spirits.

On Blue Dragon/Qing Long 青龍

《张果星��》云：“又有辅翼，则为真龙”，认为有翼方是真龙。如西周有大量身负羽翼龙纹器皿，乃至青龙在先秦纹饰中也有羽翼，一说青龙为祖龙。封建时代，龙是皇权的象征，皇宫使用器物也以龙为装饰。

<Zhang Guo Star Sutra> spoke of "with the attachment of wings, it is a true dragon". It sees that a dragon with wings is a true dragon. The Western Zhou dynasty have a great number of utensils and containers that have depictions of loong with feathered wings painted on them. There is a saying that the blue loong is the ancestor dragon. In the ancient Chinese feudal era, the dragon is a symbol for imperial power. Within the palace, utensils and containers are decorated with dragons

Ben Cao Gang Mu (《本草纲目》 (Compendium of Materia Medica)) is the most complete and comprehensive medical book ever written in the history of traditional Chinese medicine. Compiled and written by LI Shi-zhen (1518~1593), a medical expert of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) over a period of 27 years. The first draft was completed in 1578 when Ming China was at its imperial heyday https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/silk-road-themes/documentary-heritage/ben-cao-gang-mu-bencaogangmu-compendium-materia-medica

9 is a lucky number for the Chinese, due to its sharing tone with "long-lasting", and being the biggest number before it is reset (from 9 to 10).

Mount Bo, boshan. I believe it is specifically talking about this mountain in China and its unique protrusion shape.

chǐ mù, literal translation "ruler wood". I could not find a actual translation of the word

Another translation/review of the text sample is available here

Elements of culture in Ch’ing Dynasty: the Australian Museum Collection (with some supplementary material) By Baohua Li, Yikun Li

#chinese dragon #ancient chinese #Dream Dragon Posting #translation #dragon mythology #draconic #dragonkin #dragonkind #draconity #alterhuman #other+#alterbeing

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mascula-sappho · 7 months

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here's a love letter in the form of a poem to all the obscure dead languages out there and the people who love them.

here's for dying languages!

the bloodstains between the letters,

the rips in their vocab lists,

never to be sutured up.

Here's for old languages!

never to be heard by a native speaker again.

#tagamemnon #ancient rome #langblr #breton #etruscan #hittite #uhh a lot more #ancient chinese #sanskrit #latin #ofc #ancient greek #old french #too many to name #akkadian #old norse #carolina Algonquian #etc etc etc #i just love them okay!!! they're like the weird old uncles of the language world who sit in the shadows and just watch and tell old stories

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polyglot-thought · 1 year

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[Classical Mandarin->English]

Lao Zi (Lao Tzu/老子) Quote from Chapter 64 of the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching/道德经/道德經) - Color Coded Translation

—

千里之行，始於足下

千里之行，始于足下

qiān lǐ zhī xíng，shǐ yú zú xià

The journey of 1000 (chinese) miles starts under your feet.

—

Please correct me if I made a mistake.

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sweetand3asy · 1 year

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'ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴏᴠᴇʀ ᴛʜᴀᴛ' - ʟᴀᴏ ᴛᴢᴜ

#lao tzu #chinese #chinese philosophy #chinese proverbs #ancient chinese #ancient china #tao te ching #yinyang

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5water-kohaku · 1 year

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I visited the official website for Promise of Lingyun. The music was relaxing and the ladies were so charming that I had to share!

#Promise of Lingyun #ancient #ancient China #mobile game #ancient chinese #BGM #chinese BGM #pretty ladies #XD #so very pretty

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cobrastrikes421 · 2 years

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Past and present day fashion

In the of both medieval Asia the women in kimono and hanfu show both royalty and living in a perfect Society they are in.

The oni girl in medieval Japan 🇯🇵 live in well full architects and building in their day to symbolize her people of the night of the oni clan.

In medieval Chinese era women in society wear makeup and put a ornaments on their hair to show passion and beauty in their work, the female dragon wear red for royalty and power they show.

In present day now people wear what ever they want to wear from wearing black all day and wearing something irresistible. Like both female dragons wearing baddie girl outfits and emo outfits styles.

#my ocs #jackie chan adventures #jca #oni girl #female version #drago #chinese hanfu #japanese kimono #emo outfit #baddie outfit #bad gurl #medieval japan #ancient chinese #my art style #half dragon #demon oc #demon girl

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sunshinenay · 2 years

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#poetry #songsofthesouth #ancient chinese #anthology

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lunaekalenda · 1 year

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Own Character's Post: no one asked about edition! today with: Mei and Jian

warning: under the line you'll meet the most crackhead couple but still the cutest one i have ever wrote, also, a feminist plot, ancient china inspired lore in which i spent more time doing research that in my own uni works, my protected babies, me basically screaming about them and a couple extra scenes i have made specifically in the case i ever publish this and anyone asks for romantic extras to fill the void of the dramas i'm gonna write (this is a joke. the first part, i mean. angst is confirmed). sorry in advance. also, let me know if you would like to meet my other characters (such as Yvonne, Martiño, Ares, Ryu, Micah or Shi hehe) also, plot is still in development so patience pls jfhafjka. i hope you love them as much as i do <3

Mei Yun

Mei Yun is the third kid from a family of seven children. She's honest, smart and quite a daydreamer most of the time. Even when girls couldn't study on her times (and less a girl from the lowest class like her.), his big brother's drinking buddy turned out to be a royal scribe, one of the highest public charges, for the Prince Li at the Blue Palace ( in Olquivilla, the capital of the south district of the island), and, illegally and by secret, he accepts to give classes to her as a favor to his brother, for all the times he has helped him. What the scribe didn't expect to find was a writer. With all the letters. A girl with an imagination beyond humans, someone whose words tangled so beautifully ones with others, with so many stories to tell. As an author himself, he's amazed by her capability of tangle the plots, to give characters real emotions and her ability of avoiding plot holes. But, still, she has a big problem: being literate for a girl her age, without any type of relation with high class people, and, specially, without a husband, something she doesn't need and something she doesn't want, is forbidden and punished. She's almost 22, and it will be fast when the royal palace assigns her some type of horrible candidate to marry, the one she will accept, or else she'll be accused of practicing the old demoniac magic and burned alive, to say the least. But, so unexpectedly, the same man that saved her stories, is willing to save her life by asking for her hand in marriage. Maybe he has other reasons to stay near her.

Jian Gao

On the other hand, Jian Gao is the youngest of two. Raised up by his granny and feeling as the needed and unwanted male heir that the Gao needed, he writes romantic stories to try to find the real meaning of love, to try to get an idea of that idilic, romantic relationships he has dreaming of since he studied abroad, reading tons and tons of novels, for his translator condition. Even when he's the Prince's right hand, Jian likes to be, as much as the Prince himself does, mixed with the people on the city. Talk with them, help them, learn from them. And his very favorite liquor is from the little tavern in front of the Yun's house, where he meets Tai Yun, Mei's older brother, who helps him at nights he feels the most stressed and becomes a friend with who Jian loves to share a cup. In exchange, Tai asks Jian a complicated question: to help his sister to learn how to write more complex, a forbidden action that could cost his work, her life, and all of her family's money. But when he meets her, asking why she wants to learn, he listens to her ideas, to her plots. And he thinks everyone should be able to read those words, and to feel, even through a book, the intense feeling she's willing to share. And, somehow, he feels an strange attraction to her stories.

so here they are! <3 the plot is still under construction, after all, jian wasn't going to be anything more than a scribe in one chapter and mei a side character and crush of the prince, but i felt like i needed to give them the leadership they deserve! i wanted to write something light hearted (not like stalker bc i swear i can't handle this bunch of little devils), but something to just make people smile and fall in love slowly with the way the two of them see love as. omg i'm so nervous i'm sorry dhjfkhal i feel like i'm presenting my children. and now i'm leaving here a couple of extras i wrote for them <3 i hope you enjoy and pls lemme know any opinion or criticism aaa

Extra 1

(...) "Tai is at the inn. Grandma is here" Kumiko says. I bend down to kiss her hair before leaving.

"Tell her I've gone to take something to Tai, that I'll be back before dinner" I leave the living room and the house quickly. I see Tai's large silhouette sitting at one of the tables outside, his hand holding a small glass. He's talking to someone.

"Hey, Mei!" Tai shouts when he sees me. I sigh when I hear him, walking towards his table. Tai is too loud when he drinks, and I'm sure he's not even drunk yet. "Sit with us, sis."

When I reach my brother's table, the bodies that kept me from seeing his companion dissipate. It's another man. Tall, perhaps a little more mature than the last time I saw him. This time, he wears his hair down, a couple of front locks pulled back, leaving his profile in full view. I know he's smiling when he speaks, even though his glass covers his mouth.

"Long time no see, Yun Mei." Jian's voice is still as calm as ever when he speaks to me. His movements, even though he's had a little to drink, are just as fluid and elegant, slow but graceful. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, so I sense that the scribe must have more alcohol on him than he appears to have. Tai pats a seat next to him, but I don't trust him. I don't want to tell my brother about this here, he might shout it out loud and expose all three of us. Me, for writing. Him, for lying to the Prince. Jian, for disobeying the law. I decide to keep quiet for the moment. My old tutor is still watching me. Although the last time he taught me I had already turned nineteen, it is true that I had changed. However, he is still the same as ever. "How have you been?"

My cheeks begin to redden as I notice Jian's golden gaze above me, his fingers playing with the small glass near his mouth, which glistens from the traces of alcohol he just licked. "Good…. Thank you," he smiles at me before getting up and paying. "Do you have to go now?" I ask. Jian sighs, the smile returning to his lips as he turns to me.

"I'm… Maybe I'm not quite sober…" his hand moves up to my cheek. "And you look beautiful, as always…" With one last smile, Jian leaves the little square, walking calmly back to his house. Tai puts an arm around my shoulders.

"Let's go, Tai."

Jian's caress still tingles on my skin as I walk back to my brother. I remember feeling that the first time we kissed. Going home with my finger on my lips as I felt them tingle. Hui Ying had compared it to the brush of a butterfly's wings on the skin. I looked back, but Jian's slender silhouette had already disappeared.

I liked Jian. I liked him a lot, ever since the day he came through my front door claiming he was coming to give me lessons, when I was days away from being twenty and he had just turned twenty-four. It had started to rain and the bottom of his hanfu was wet, and his hair was dripping incessantly on his face. I prepared hot tea for both of us and offered him Tai's dry clothes, which he declined. We started the class and there I realized how attractive I found him, how intelligent he is and how gently he smiled at me when I was wrong. My heart was beating especially fast when his huge hand rested on top of mine, helping me to trace the drawing accurately. It was common for him to do that, but my body never got used to the touch. I would look up at him in awe, my cheeks flushed and my eyes sparkling. With each passing class, his closeness began to become more comfortable, how he would lift my chin with two fingers to look at him when I became frustrated after a very difficult word; how he would reach over my shoulder to read during our classes, the innocent brushes of our hands when we exchanged papers. The attraction turned out to be mutual after a year of teaching, when the brushes were no longer casual but sought after. Jian would go for walks with me in the huge garden of his house when he attended class there, always with his hair down and without any adornment to show his superior position to mine. We would walk while he explained to me what scribe's work in the palace was like, while we laughed at any nonsense and he gently brushed my hair away from my face to look me in the eyes.

Jian, at any rate, never did anything I didn't want him to. He stood by until I allowed him to kiss me, the hand touches were purely casual until he took my hand. I still remember the hint of tea and alcohol from the last kiss we shared, just before he gave me the most painful letter I had ever received.

It was an envelope with a leaf from the peach tree we liked to sit on, and a piece of paper written in handwriting that didn't look like his, blurry and shaky.

"We can't see each other anymore." (...)

Extra 2 ok no more angst i swear this one is even painful from the corniness

(...) "It's a good idea, after all, he is an erudite" my father talks to himself as if trying to convince himself that Tai's idea is not terrible. Kumiko keeps watching me, studying my reactions despite being so young. My mother has a huge smile and my grandmother has my hand locked in hers. Opposite on the table, Hai holds a half-asleep Zihao in her arms, listening intently. "Still, aren't the parents who search for the daughter-in-law? Why a poor young woman? I mean, my daughter, you are beautiful and intelligent, a good match…. but shouldn't he marry a noblewoman?" Tai asks for silence as he picks up the letter. He rereads it quickly. "Apparently, Jian Gao spoke so highly of Mei to his parents that they allowed Jian to marry her. You can tell he loves her very much." Everyone's gaze falls on me. It's true, Jian loves me, as much as I love him. But marriage is a big thing. Especially for a girl like me, used to eating just enough dinner to keep from fainting from hunger, reusing and sewing the same hanfu over and over again, and pretending to be illiterate on a daily basis while i study next to him. To marry a man like him. An erudite, a royal scribe, taught in all the arts and excelled in letters, with a job in the royal chamber of scribes. Known as an author, with addictive literature. And very attractive. Tall, amber-eyed and pale-skinned, with rosy lips and an easy smile. Women whisper when they see him pass by, offering to carry his books or fix his manbun. Always so attentive and affectionate, so close….

"….which is why I think they should get married." Tai finishes.

(...)

"Are you unhappy with the proposal," Jian asks later, walking beside me near the watercourse in his garden. The hanfu he gave me fits me well, as if it was sewn for me. I clear my throat and force myself to smile, though I don't look directly at him.

"No, no. It just caught me by surprise, that's all. I'm not unhappy." Though Jian gives me a worried look, which means he doesn't quite trust what I say, he sighs and continues walking silently. As is common, he does not wear any ornaments in his hair or hanfu to show his superior position, despite being on his property. When I arrived at his house, perhaps a little before the appointed time, Jian was just finishing taking a bath. His servant ushered me into the sitting room to wait for him, and I saw him appear shortly after with his damp hair tied up in a high bun. He looked so ethereal and unreal. I could tell he looked like an appetizing future, but it terrified me. To be the mistress of a house like that, to walk beside him as his wife. To be seen as property.

I know Jian doesn't intend that. His eyes are sincere when he speaks, but I can't help but think so. It's what people will say, deep down. Jian stops walking, his hand gripping my waist, making me stop. He watches me closely, amber eyes roaming my face, so close, I could even count the dark flecks glinting in his irises.

"I don't know what you're thinking," he murmurs, softly. "But really, Mei. Don't do something you don't want to do. I don't want to force you into anything, let alone pressure you. I want you to have the final say. Not me, not your father, not mine. You." Jian's fingers are even faster than my tears when he wipes them away.

"It's not for me…" I whisper. Jian watches me, listening carefully. "I don't want people talking about you. That I'm younger than you, that I'm poor, that I'm not one of those pretty candidates the matchmaker is looking for. That you let yourself be lured by a girl with a lust for money."

Jian smiles subtly, before pressing his lips gently against my forehead.

"Mei…" he pulls away from me slowly, fixing his eyes on mine again. "I don't care what people say about me. The important thing is that I'll have you by my side. And I know what I feel, just like you know what you feel. As long as we are sure, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks." (..)

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