Tang treasures from Silk Road capital, Xi'an

Buddhist statues, gilded bronze, 700s, 

Changwu County Museum. 

In my first post on the Silk Route in China, I concentrated on the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (c1260-1368). This was when Mongolian leader Kublai Khan gained the title Great Khan, by embracing Ch­inese culture and rebuild­ing Peking as his winter capital. The Silk Road Saga was the exhibition held at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2013.  The Art Gallery of NSW had already had two exhib­itions from the Shaanxi Province: The Terracotta Warriors and Horses in 1983 and The First Emperor: China’s Entombed Warriors in 2010-11”.

Hidden treasures from Beijing’s Palace Museum in the Forbidden City didn’t come to Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria until 2015. The exhib­ition called A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor 1736–1795  told the story of China’s most succ­ess­ful, long living ruler and fore­most art collector, 4th emp­eror of the Qing Dyn­asty (1644–1911). This exhibition provided works from the Palace Mus­eum’s art collection, built on the imperial collection of the Ming dynasty.

Then in 2016 the Art Gallery of New South Wales focused on an earlier Chinese empire that needed closer analysis. While much of Europe was still in the Dark Ages and London was just a market town of a few thousand people, the Tang Empire (618-907) was the most powerful realm in the world. The empire stretched from today’s Korea in the north, Vietnam in the south and far into Central Asia.

At the heart of Tang was its ancient capital, Chang’an/now Xi’an. Lo­cated at one end of the famous Silk Trade Route, this teeming cosmopolitan metropolis was noted for its great wealth, sophistication and cultural diversity; an advanced and outward-looking society that showed great tolerance of outsiders. It was home to 1 million people inside its intact and impressive walls, which tourists can still walk.

 Earthenware camel & rider, 742. 

Excavated from Li Xian's tomb. Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology 

Gilded basket, silver, c850, from Famen Monastery, 

Famen Temple Museum. 

“Tang: Treasures from the Silk Road Capital”  was a NSW exhibition that explored life in Chang’an during the Tang Empire. Each artefact carried a story from this extraordinary city; from the freedom and power of women to inn­ov­ations in fashion and music, from the elevation of tea culture to an art form, to religious tolerance and the rise and fall of Buddhism. The booming artisanship in gold, silver and ceramics; to great innov­ations in Chinese fashion and music.

The works on display in the Tang Treasures demonstrated exceptional crafts­manship and storytelling power, including a C9th tea grinder that bel­onged to Emp­eror Xizong; an early C8th mural from the walls inside Prince Jiemin’s tomb; and a Hayagriva statue from the site of the Anguo Monastery, an important late Tang dynasty Buddhist centre.

Archaeological findings of sculptures and murals were unearthed from a Tang-era tomb in Xi’an. This exhibition showcased 135 spect­acular objects from the Chinese province of Shaanxi, which demonstrated the high artistic achievements of the Tang dynasty (618–907).

Part of the 12 zodiac animals. earthenware. 

Tang era tomb Xi'an. 

The best Tang epic "Xi You Ji, Journey to the West" traced the pil­grimage of the C7th monk Xuanzang along the Silk Road’s many arms from China to India, in search of Buddhist script­ures. Xuanzang lived at the peak of the Tang Dynasty, setting off on his epic advent­ures from Chang’an. He dodged bandits while crossing the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan and Pak­istan, survived the deserts of Central Asia and sailed down the Ganges into India.

Xuanzang was passionate for learning, ret­urning home only after 17 years of adventure, to be feted by scholars, kings and emperors. And he brought 1335 volumes of sutras to Chang’an's royal courts. Xuan­­zang was des­cribed as the soul of Chinese nationality - a towering bronze statue of the monk was placed on the city’s main ancient road. With his traveller’s staff in hand, the tiers of the Great Wild Goose Pagoda rose up behind the statue. Here the monk conducted his translations, which were then stored in the same pagoda, a building that remains from the Tang dynasty.

Dragon, 700s gilded bronze & iron, Caochangpo Xian, Shaanxi History Mus 

All photos from Alaintruong Archives

Back then, Chang’an was China’s only cosmopolitan met­rop­olis, having nearly a million people and being ruled by emperors who were the sons of heaven. The city’s layout was dominated by the Palace City and the Imperial City, a skyline of palaces, pagodas, temples, mar­kets and monasteries, encircled by city walls and great city gates.

Chang’an’s wealth came from its strategic location on the great medieval trade route, Silk Road. Not only did the roads bring silk and other exotica, but it was also traversed by ideas, cultures and religions, including Bud­dhism. The legacy included gilded bronze dragons, mirrors inlaid with mother-of-pearl and turquoise, earthen-ware sets of China's zodiac (12 animals), ornate baskets wrought from silver and the faces of the Buddha, rendered in marble and stone.

But while many buildings were destroyed and the caves declined into fragility, precious objects of gold, silver, ceramic, glass and elaborate mural paintings were carefully preserved and guarded. These objects of great cultural significance were displayed at the NSW Exhibit­ion which showed how the Golden Age continued; the legend of the scholar and his celestial companions lived on. 

Famen Temple, famous for storing the veritable Finger Bone of the Sakyamuni Buddha, is in Shaanxi Province, east of Xi'an. The gilded basket above (c850) was brought to Australia from the Famen Temple Museum. As was a basin with mandarin ducks and floral medallion design (800).

Marie Schmolka: Czech, UK, Nicholas Winton

The Nicholas Winton story was a joy to write and was well received by the readers. Now we can ask who planned the rescue of Jewish and political refugees from the Nazis in Czechos­lovakia and who involved Nicholas Winton in Britain?

Marie Schmolka

Maria Schmolka Society

Marie Eisner (1890–1940) was born to a non-religious Jewish family in Prague. She was a quiet woman, a social democrat involved in social work and high-level politics. With Hitler’s takeover in neighbouring Ger­many, she coordinated the assistance to refugees from the Nazi regime who sought asylum in Czechoslovakia. Her social democratic links helped her with leading politicians. As a leader of the Jewish women's movement, Eisner became the re­presentative of JOINT and HICEM, two Jewish refugee organisat­ions, and the sole Czechoslovak represent­ative on the League of Nations Commission for Refugees.

Marie Eisner married at 30 and although their short marriage remained child­less, she loved her step-children. After the death of her lawyer-husband Leopold Schmolka, Marie toured the Near East - it was this visit to Pal­es­tine that stirred her Zionist passion. On returning to Prag­ue, Marie joined the Zionist Organisation, WIZO and the Jewish Party, of which she soon was a central fig­ures.

In 1933 she was the founder and president of the National Coor­dinating Committee for Czech Refugees, where her col­l­eagues included Max Brod. This was the organisation that took the central role in the relief campaign for Nazi victims from Germany, both Jews and non-Jews. It was thought she was the moving spirit in the est­ab­lish­ment of the relief committee for the Jews of Carp­ath­ian Ruth­enia, part of the 1st and 2nd Czechos­lov­ak Republic between the wars (and the location of my in-laws’ home).

It must have been a exhausting life for Schmolka, attending the conferences of international comm­ittees in Gen­eva, Paris and London, as well as Jewish con­ferences ded­ic­ated to social and national causes. She visited the areas where refugees huddled, collecting evidence to mobilise public opinion and writing appeals to foreign amb­assadors in Prague and to Jewish agencies abroad.

Originally German Jewish refugees found Czechos­lov­akia welcoming, but they were gradually viewed with suspicion. And other countries refused to offer asylum at all: Schmolka knew this first hand as she was the Czech delegate at the infamous Evian Conf­er­en­ce in July 1938. in France. Even Britain would take only unacc­omp­an­ied children – that way, no criminal foreigner parents would invade their nation.

After the Sept 1938 Munich agreement and the subsequent annexation of the Czech borderlands, the relief organisations in Prague were unable to cope with the large influx of refugees from the occupied Sudet­en­land; both Jews and political oppon­ents of Nazism were flooding in. Her struggle intensified on behalf of Jew­ish refugees who were stranded in no-man's-land, the narrow strip between the 1939 German and Czechoslovak borders.

It was Marie Schmolka’s appeal for help that brought the young Nicholas Winton (1909-2015) to Prague in Dec 1938. For the next three weeks, Winton helped organise the emigration of Czech Jewish children to Great Britain. He returned to Britain in Jan 1939, two months before the occupation, and continued with refugee work. Winton was definitely a hero, but it is clear that other, longer serving volunteers had already worked to save thousands of Jewish and political refugees from the Nazis.

Schmolka's appeals were met by other human­e U.K volunteers eg Doreen Warriner, a representative of the Brit­ish Committee for Czech Refugees. Doreen was monit­or­ed by MI5 between 1938-52 for her remarkable efforts!

When Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Marie Schmolka and her co-workers from the Committee for Refugees were among the first arrested. In the meantime Warriner supported Winton with the vital Kindertransport programme.

The Czech Kindertransport arrived in London, Feb 1939

The Guardian 

Hannah Steiner, president of Czech WIZO, was arrested a day after the German occupation of Prague in March 1939, so Marie Schmolka presented herself to the Gestapo and declared that she was responsible for all the activities of the relief committee. Soon after, Schmolka was imprisoned for two months in the not­or­ious Pan­krác Prison where the Gestapo subjected her to hideous questioning. Schmolka was released only in May 1939, thanks to ongoing protests of the Ministers of the Protect­orate of Bohemia and Moravia.

After her release, Schmolka had the energy to resume her work. But even more unbelievably, in Aug 1939 Adolf Eichmann, the head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, sent this Jewish woman to Paris, to demand more efficient Jew­ish emigration!!

Terrified by the outbreak of the WW2, Schmolka moved to London and established herself. She was active on behalf of the Czechoslovak Jewish refugees and exiles, working in Bloomsbury House. This was the former Palace Hotel purchased in Gower St which became the meeting place for the Czech, Zionist and Quaker social workers. Months later in March 1940, Marie Schmolka was dead at 46, having exhausted herself into a fatal heart attack. She wouldn’t take time off work to seek out medical care.

Prominent Zionists and luminaries of the Czech­os­lov­ak­ian government in exile gathered at the Golders Green Cremat­or­ium (no grave) to say farewell to one of the key European organisers of Jewish emigration before and during the early years of WW2. Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, made the main speech.

The Czech exile WIZO group changed their name to Marie Schmolka Society and in 1944, published a slim memorial. Now the Marie Schmolka Memorial is collecting information for her memorials - a plaque at her house near Hampstead, a statue in Prague and a prize for historical work addressing female Jewish social workers in the Holocaust.

A plaque at her house in London

honouring the heroine.  Press to expand

The women organisers featured in the cont­emp­orary records, but disappeared from public memory later on. There were monographs of Schmolka's fellow Zionists Felix Weltsch and Max Brod but Schmolka, who saved thousands of lives, was very difficult to trace. Some new information emerged in April 2019, at an Association of Jewish Refugees Conference,  

London. Thank you to the Marie Schmolka Society  and to Anna Hájková, in History Today 2018

Helsinki: fine architecture, coffee & saunas

                      

Finnish National Theatre, opened 1902
Two steeples with pointed terracotta roofs; 3 arched doorways and 5 smaller arches above

Trip Advisor

I don’t like snow, ice or skiing. But Helsinki has been in the top cities in 2025 Global Liveability Index for at least 10 years and was next on my To Do List.  It is also perfect for anyone looking for a cool climate change that offers milder weather for summer travel and nature-based holidays, with 70% of the country being forest and 10% being lakes.

Helsinki (pop 684,589 in 2025). Finland’s southern capital, sits on a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland. Its central avenue, Mannerheimintie, is flanked by institutions including the National Museum, tracing Finnish history from the Stone Age to the present. Also on Mannerheimintie are the imposing Parliament House and Kiasma, a contemporary art museum.

Helsinki Cathedral

ResearchGate

Stunning Helsinki Cathedral is a loved landmark. Built from 1830-52 when Finland was still under Russian rule, it was a tribute to the then-Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. This notable building is the main Lutheran cathedral for the Diocese of Helsinki with a rich early C19th history. Designed by Carl Ludvig Engel in the Neoclassical style, see the distinctive green dome surrounded by 4 smaller domes, creating a striking silhouette. Engel intended the cathedral to be the focal point of his design for Senate Square, with other buildings adding to its grandeur. Note the symmetry with colonnades and pediments adorning each arm. The cathedral was called St Nicholas' Church until Finland gained independence in 1917. 

Uspenski Cathedral, ornate Russian iconostasis

The other great cathedral is the Uspenski Cathedral near the south harbour. This ornate red brick cathedral is the largest orthodox church in Western Europe, and is even more lavish on the inside. This redbrick cathedral dates back to 1868, well located to overlook the harbour.

Huvilakatu beautiful street

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Finland’s capital Helsinki is artistic, functional in design and naturally cool. Huvilakatu, with charming and colourful two-storey homes, is known as Villa St. This picturesque street, c320 meters long, is lined with beautiful Art Nouveau buildings from the early C20th. Huvilakatu is a very beautiful street.

The Finns are the world’s biggest consumers of coffee so its café culture would be perfect for me; a perfect few days for couples. Drink great amounts of coffee since Helsinki’s coffee culture is typically Scandinavian in beautifully designed cafés. Ex-Swedish, the favourite Helsinki café is Johan & Nyström, a fine heart of the city’s food culture. Slow roasted, sustainable, carefully chosen beans, passionate baristas also provide a mix of traditional Scandi treats eg cinnamon buns in a perfectly chic environment.

Book some weeks ahead for Grön Restaurant. This tiny restaurant in the city centre focuses on creating Scandinavian style plant-based food from seasonal, local and wild produce. The four-course set menu includes everyone’s favourite sweets - grilled strawberries with granita, meringue, fennel leaves and caramelised strawberry milk. Become obsessed with rooftop bars while travelling, viewing the city from above, with a cocktail in hand. The best place to do this is Ateljée Bar. The drinks are more exp ensive than the bars below, but the view is special.

 Market Hall

 My Thousand Miles

Helsinki’s famous Central Market Square/Kauppatori sits in the South Harbour at the end of the Esplanade Park, facing the Baltic Sea. The traditional fresh food sells next to souvenirs and homemade crafts. And visit the Fortress of Suomenlinna, a short ferry ride from the mainland.

Temppeliaukio Church is in the heart of Helsinki, and a popular tourist attraction. Built directly into a solid rock, Temppeliaukio’s nick is Rock Church. The interior still has rugged, rocky walls and a stunning copper dome roof surrounded by a thin row of skylight windows, distilling the light beautifully around the alter. Due to the great acoustics of the church, many concerts are held here.

National Gallery

Impressionistsgallery

The Finnish National Gallery, which opened in 1888, now has a collection that includes 43,000+ works of art and archival material. The State-owned collection is part of Finland’s national heritage. My favourite Scandinavian artist was Norwegian Edvard Munch who was born in 1863; his works often explored themes of love, death and human emotions. And look for Munch’s Self-portrait and Swedish Anders Zorn’s Girls Bathing in the Open Air 1890. Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt’s Conveying the Child’s Coffin 1879 was emotional, as expected.

Kiasma Contemporary Art Gallery

Tripadvisor

The mission of Kiasma Gallery is to collect and research contemporary art, so I didn’t visit. But others loved the 8,800 art works acquired by Kiasma which are part of the Finnish National Gallery collection, a significant element of Finnish cultural heritage.

Löyly is an impressive public sauna and restaurant that sits on the Baltic Sea c2km outside the city centre. For €19/person book 2.5 hours of pleasure, going between different saunas, jumping into the Baltic to cool off, and sitting around on the deck sipping drinks. Once given a towel and a locker, women and men are then split into different changing/shower rooms to get changed. Then they come together for a choice of three different types of facilities: continuously heated sauna, once-heated sauna and traditional smoke sauna.

Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia

Françoise Fren­k­el's vital WW2 memoirs

Françoise Fren­k­el (1889-1975) was born to Jewish parents in Piotr­ków Poland, near Lodz. After an introduction saying how she became fascinated with books as a child, she continued with her studies at the Sorbonne and did an apprenticeship with an anti­qu­arian bookseller. Not surprisingly, she soon developed a profess­ional passion for literature, especially French literature.

Francoise Frenkel, Rien où poser sa tête

Published 1945

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Germany In 1921 Françoise set up the first French-language bookshop in Berlin, La Maison du Livre, recognising the appetite for French culture in Berlin after WW1. Her business successfully appealed to classy people: diplomats, aut­hors, artists. In the heady years of the Weimar Republic (1918-33) and after, her bookshop became a cultural centre in the city.

She worked with her Russian-born husband Simon Raich­enstein until 1933. Ident­ity papers were denied him by French auth­orities who is­s­ued him with a deportation order. He was taken to Drancy detention camp near Paris and killed in Ausch­witz in July 1942.

Frenkel’s dream job lasted until 1939 but the end was seen with the descent into Naz­ism, racial gen­o­cide and the start of WW2. Nazi officers & Hitler Youths crept over the streets, destroying Jewish-run businesses, smashing windows and burning synagog­ues. Krist­allnacht Nov 1938 was the worst.

Françoise had to escape to France, just before war broke out. Only days after her depart­ure from Germany, Nazi Germany bomb­ed Paris, causing terrible destruction. Frenkel would have stayed in Paris but she was forced to keep mov­ing. In the meantime Mar­shal Philippe Petain’s regime remained in Vichy as the nominal gov­ern­ment of France, op­erating as a client state of Nazi Germ­any from Nov 1942 on.

Françoise and many other city residents sought refuge in the loveliest parts of France - first Avignon (Sth), then Nice (S.E). Frenkel her­self was constantly moved from safe house to safe house, from refugee hotel to messy refugee hotel. Nice was overrun with ref­ug­ees who were hiding in poor living cond­itions; families were split up. Françoise understood that she surv­ived only because some stran­g­ers risked their lives to protect her. She escaped many crises with Nazi police officers rounding up Jews for concentration camps, but informants were clearly everywhere.

Just as it was looking as if most non-Jews were either brutal them­selves or uncaring about Jews, her memoir became a tap dance bet­ween acknowledging human cruelty and being in awe of human kind­ness. In fact her most valuable insights were into the behaviour of French people specifically under Occupation in Vichy France.

Deportation of Foreign Jews from Paris 

to Drancy detention camp.

Frenkel conveyed a huge debt of gratitude in her work. I would not have. My grandfather searched Eastern Europe for his sister, from the last letter he received (1942) until his 1971 death. My father-in-law searched for his brother, sister-in-law and 6 nieces/nephews after his liberation from Ukraine; all had been exterm­in­ated except one child.

Switzerland  From Dec 1942 on Françoise attempted to reach neutral Switzerland, her bids for safety being des­perate. In her book, she detailed how in 1943 she finally smug­gled herself across the border from Haute-Savoie. Eventually her memoir Rien où poser sa tête/No Place to Lay One’s Head was written on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland and published in 1945 by Geneva-based publish­ers Jeheber.

What happened in Françoise Frenkel's subsequent life? She returned to live in Nice and died there in 1975. But not even a photo of the author exists. Very limited extra informat­ion came from a list of persons who were given per­mis­sion to cros­s­ the border into Switz­erland during WW2 and who obtained a resid­ence permit there. Those documents are now in State Archives of Gen­eva.

After the 1945 publication, the memoir was largely forgotten until recently when a copy was accidentally discovered in Nice. In the preface of the book’s newest publication, French novelist/Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano added to the story of refugees fleeing terror the world over.

Of course Frenkel’s book reminded me of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, the girl who survived in hiding in Amsterdam until the family was deported to death camps in Poland in 1944. Miraculously her father Otto Frank survived and miraculously he found Anne’s diary. And Catherine Taylor  added another comparison - Irène Némirovsky’s unfin­ish­ed novel Suite Française, which was miraculously discovered by her daughter, decades after Némirovsky perished at Aus­chwitz-Birkenau. Like Rien où poser sa tête, these two books works were lucky to be published. But unlike Frenkel, Anne Frank became a well known sym­bol of the Holocaust.

Division of France between German Occupied Zone and Vichy Free Zone

highlighting Paris, Drancy, Nice (N) in France and Geneva (G) in Switzerland

Frenkel’s quest for refuge in war-torn Europe reminds us all of our contemp­orary debates reg­arding refugees. Like the author back in WW2, many unlucky citizens in the modern world need to flee starv­ation, war or ethnic oppression. No country wants them today, so fleeing is still an alien­ating, unforgiving journey of necessity. The story today is as tragic today as it was when my own husband was carried over the mountains between home (Czechoslovakia) and the DP camps in Austria after the war. Worse, probably.

 

No Place To Lay one's Head

by Francoise Frenkel

translated by Stephanie Smee, 2019

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Bookshop in Berlin (alternative title) by Francoise Frenkel

Booktopia

Penguin Random House's Vintage published a translation of Frenkel’s French book, Rien où poser sa tête in 2017 as A Bookshop in Berlin. Hopefully the orig­in­al style was capt­ured in English by Australian translator Steph­an­ie Smee. For a detailed review, read Brigette Manion in Asymptote.