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 starting the great medieval trade routes, the 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 the Chinese zodiac's 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).