One of the things that intrigues me most about the items discovered in the tombs of the Han is the story that they tell – not only of the search for immortality, or to display each King’s incredible lasting might and wealth, but also the need for the most basic material comforts in the afterlife.  Every physical need that would need to be catered for is represented, sometimes in very mundane items.  One moment you are looking at a remarkable terracotta dancing figure, the next you are examining a ladle of the type you might find in your own kitchen.

Of course there are also the wow items, the beautiful jades and gold-work.  My list of favourite treasures in the show reflects this remarkable characteristic of Han tombs; they contain both the most sublime treasures and the most humble objects.

Only by seeing both together can you get a true impression of what life was like in Han royal courts over 2000 years ago.

Top 5 highlights not to miss:

1. Jade suits
The two jade suits are definitely the stars of the show; both because they are so rare and because they are so beautiful.  The suit from Xuzhou is the most beautiful, the jade is exquisite and it is really the best jade suit ever found.  The suit from Nanyue is incredibly striking; the red silk thread is very unusual making this object one of a kind.

2. Ginger grater
This is a real window into daily life over 2000 years ago and it is the earliest such item ever found.  It is both functional and beautiful as well as being the type of object you could very easily imagine using today.   I really want one for my kitchen and I would have loved to have made one as a recreation object, but we couldn’t find a suitable company to make it for the show.

3. Toilet
This is another glimpse of daily life at its most humble – what makes it remarkable is that the design really hasn’t changed for squat toilets in China in over 2000 years.  If you go into rural China you will still find latrines that look just like this.

4. Gold buckle
This is one of the most exotic items in the exhibition. The design isn’t Chinese at all but Mongolian.  The buckle is from the Mongolian steppes and one of the many items in the exhibition that show that China was not insular during the Han period but in fact had many trade and cultural links with the outside world.

5. Coffin
This is exceptionally rare as only 5 jade coffins have been found so far.  The one in our exhibition is the largest and the only one yet to be fully reconstructed.  It is a very imposing and impressive object and as an artefact it is essential for revealing what Han burials were like.

Jade coffin

It is now the world’s most populated country with over 1.3 million people and is the world’s fastest growing economy.  It is a country undergoing constant change: having to balance its economic growth with the core ideals of the Communist state; facing the challenge of growing environment and energy needs (China is the world’s leading investor in renewable energy technologies); and responding to the shift from an agriculturally based population, to vast expansion and migration to its cities.

Despite all this change, and the tremendous differences between today’s China and the Han period politically, ideologically and demographically, the influences of the Han period are still very clearly felt in China.

In today’s China ‘Han’ is often used interchangeably with ‘Chinese’: the language is referred to as the Han language – ‘Hanyu’; Chinese script as Han writing – ‘Hanzi’; and over 90% of Chinese nationals regard themselves as Han Chinese – ‘Hanren’.

Many of the folk customs started in the Han period are still present now.  Jade is still one of the most popular stones for jewellery and is still associated with semi-mythic properties and mysticism.  The custom of providing material comforts for the deceased is still popular, family and friends providing paper representations of luxury items for their dead, such as cars, houses and money.

Most importantly, much of the Confucian ideology which provided the framework for governance in the Han period is still present.  These ideals stated the need for personal advancement and government through learning and individual merit.

In Confucius’ book The Great Learning the core ideal for the need of self-improvement is outlined:  ‘From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything.’

This led to great social mobility in the Han period; whether you were a farmer’s son or a rich aristocrat, if you could prove yourself and pass the necessary exams you could rise to the highest levels of government.  Nothing within the state administration was given by right of birth, selection being based on ability to do the role rather than status.  This is still true in China today, and even the system of examination to achieve administrative posts in the state still bears some similarity to the structures present in the Han.

In China’s area of greatest growth, trade and commerce, Confucian ideals on ritual etiquette and diplomacy are still being practiced.  The culture of gift exchange to create trade and cultural links is still a core part of business in China.

These ideals have lasted over 2000 years and form much of the structure at the heart of Chinese society today.  Their simplicity has provided a solid framework for Chinese governance whilst allowing room for change and growth in society.

Lucy Theobald

Remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the hero searches for the Holy Grail? The Grail was believed to be the cup that Jesus Christ used during the Last Supper and gave eternal life to whoever drank from it.  A real-life ‘grail’ was discovered in the tomb of the King of Nanyue in Southern China.

Jade cup with bronze basin stand

The tubular jade cup is supported by three gold-headed silver feline dragons, and it is believed that it was used to collect morning dew.  It was thought by collecting in the jade vessel the liquid would be imbued with magical powers creating a potion of immortality.

Searching for eternal life was a major preoccupation of the kings and nobles during the late Warring States period and soon after the unification of China. The First Emperor of Qin was said to have sent his court physician Xu Fu, accompanied by thousands of young boys and girls, in search of a remote, mythical island that was said to contain elixirs of immortality.

Emperor Wu of the Han (r. 141-87 BC) was recorded as building a device for collecting dewdrops in the Jian Zhang Palace because he believed that drinking the morning dew mixed with jade powder in a jade cup conferred longevity.  A number of jade cups have been found in Han dynasty royal tombs.

Jade was the most prized rare stone of the period.  Incredibly hard, this translucent pale green stone was a symbol of lasting durability; where other things would corrupt jade would last intact through the ages.  The stone was believed to have mystical properties, particularly in terms of protection.  It was thought that covering the body in the stone would deter corrupting demons and preserve the deceased intact eternally.  To this end the Han elite created incredible jade suits for their burials.  Carved decorative jades of many forms were also used throughout the tombs to infer their mystical protection.

Soon after the Han dynasty collapsed the quantity of jades included in burials declined sharply and the jade suit completely disappeared. This was due, in part, to the spread of Buddhism, which taught that reincarnation of the body was no longer important for existence in the next life. Nevertheless, jade still played an important role in Chinese culture.

Even two thousand years later, Chinese people still believe that jade possesses magical powers that can protect the owner from harm. As a result, jade is still greatly prized and fortunes are invested in it by the Chinese.

Chinse Families Together

Below Jeremy Yuan, age 8, has contributed a blog post about the project and his riddle.

In January my parents told me there was going to be a Fitzwilliam project about Han China. They asked me if I wanted to be involved and I agreed. I knew this was a chance to get popular. In early March my mum received 24 pictures of Chinese objects, we were meant to choose one.

I wanted to do the toilet but it was too hard to describe so I chose a Chinese emperor’s seal (not the animal seal).

We were invited to the Fitzwilliam Museum on Saturday 17th March 2012 to write our riddles.

At first we went into a fan room to have a practise creating a riddle and comparing a butterfly (not real, a model) with a fan. Next we went into Chinese gallery and we saw a Chinese model of a black elephant and thought about if we were it how would we feel and we described it. Then we went upstairs to the 1st floor and went into a gallery where beautiful paintings were on the wall.

We were given a pencil, an A4 sheet of paper, and a clipboard. We were given the photograph of the object we chose and we wrote a riddle about it. We were very careful that we did not include the name of the artefact.

I did an impressive riddle of 140 words. Like the many other children who wrote a riddle, I’m very proud of my work and I hope there will be another exhibition like this. 

Jeremy’s ‘What am I?’ riddle:

I need ink to produce work,
I give whoever uses me the power of an emperor,
I have writing at the bottom of me,
I have a beautiful golden dragon knob on the top of me,
I long to get up and stretch my body for I am in a really annoying position,
I always want to get up and fly away but I am imprisoned forever and I am getting quite lonely,
I am old and battered but the gold that surrounds me always reminds me of the golden era that I was in.

As part of the exhibition Professor Roel Sterckx gave a talk on food, politics and religion in Han China.  Here he talks about the importance and symbolism of food in the Han tombs, and why food would be buried in the tombs for the dead.

Roel Sterckx
Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History, Science and Civilization

My involvement with The Search for Immortality has been in examining why objects were buried in the Han tombs, in particular what the meanings were for objects related to food, such as ladles, vessels, pots, platters and so on.

The offering of sacrifice to the ancestors was one of the main ways in which the living community maintained a bond with the departed and those who were buried in the tombs.  Food was an important mechanism for creating a link between the living and the dead in Han Dynasty culture.

One of the main ways in which food was used was as an offering to ancestral and other spirits.  Several interesting ideas lie behind this whole culture of food sacrifice.

The first idea was that the dead needed to be catered for in the afterlife.  To appease the spirits of the departed you had to keep them happy, and a way of doing this was to keep them well fed so that they would leave you alone.

A second idea was that by offering food sacrifices you could keep a sensory memory and sensory bond with those people buried in the tomb.

A third idea was of the symbolisms associated with the manipulation of food and food objects in funerary culture.  Many of these sacrificial offerings were meant to be metaphors or images for all sorts of moral values.  One in particular was the use of a sacrificial offering known as a stew, or ‘geng’ in Chinese.  This was a soup consisting of all sorts of ingredients, but a very special soup as it had to be very harmoniously put together with no individual ingredient overpowering the other.  It symbolised harmony and represented that everything was peaceful.

Another interesting belief was that flavour could be manipulated to reach spirits that were at a distance or far away from you. If you wanted to reach the spirits who had passed away in recent generations then food offerings would contain relatively more flavour.

The further back you go in time, and the further your memory of your ancestors had to stretch, the less flavour you had in the offerings.   It was almost as if flavour and memory were each others counterparts.  Many of the ritual texts of the period suggest that the highest forms of sacrifice were those that were flavourless and insipid.  Water is referred to as the ultimate sacrificial ale or wine because it is plain. You could not offend any spirit with it and it is also the ingredient in which you could blend all other types of flavours or fragrances.

What is exciting about this exhibition is that it shows the continuum between the living and the dead. The tomb structures reflected all the arrangements of the palaces of the living kings.  So it is not just exciting to see the wonderful jade suits in the exhibition, which are the high end of luxury, or the many items for banqueting, but that we also see mundane items such as the lavatory.  This suggests that catering for all the bodily functions of the spirits was perpetuated in the tomb, not just before the banquet, but after it as well.

Gilt bronze wine container

After passing the remaining huge blocking stones that were pulled out by the tomb robbers, there is a very steep set of stairs leading to a lower level with a large entertainment room, arsenal, kitchen, well, lavatory, storage chamber and ice cellar. It was a place designed for eternal happiness—eating, drinking and dancing without end. On the ground floor, there are four chambers that lead through to the rear chamber.

The large numbers of coins were found in these chambers. Behind these four chambers, an even narrower tomb passage leads to the rear chamber that was also blocked with huge stones. Unfortunately, the tomb robbers had succeeded in breaking through this defence too.

Only a few personal belongings had survived, including an unusual design of jade pendant in the shape of an archer’s ring and a jade bear used as a mat weight. Beyond the second group of huge stone blocks, a small corridor leads to two lavatories next to the rear chamber; this provided a lavatory for the king and possibly his spouse also, whilst the second lavatory would have been intended for his guests and servants.  There is no concrete evidence to identify the owner of this tomb, but the seals and coins help to date the tomb to between 175 and 128 BC.

For me, the incredible structure and artefacts of Beidongshan illustrates the majesty of the tombs of the Han dynasty.  It really is an undergraound palace; the treasures found within it are some of the most remarkable ever uncovered.

The gently smiling jade bear that was found in the lower rear chambers is also one of the last items that you will encounter in The Search for Immortality.  The bear marks the mysterious and enigmatic quality of these objects buried deep in these ghostly palaces of the dead, their personality still present and speaking to us after 2000 years.

Jade weight in the form of a bear

Beidongshan Tomb

The most complicated of all the kings’ tombs in Xuzhou is Beidongshan. The tomb was dug into the side of a hill with a 56m long and 3-4m wide tomb passage. Halfway along the passage are two mounds of earth representing the watch towers at the entrance of a palace. The northern end of the passage was sealed with huge blocking stones, each weighing around 8,000Kg. The main tomb structure resembles the residential section of a royal palace and was painted with cinnabar, a red-coloured ore of mercury sulphide.

Although the tomb had been plundered several times in the past, a great number of objects have been excavated by archaeologists. Robbers did not discover hidden niches in the tombs passage-ways and 224 earthenware tomb guardians painted in vivid red, black and purple survived intact.

However only seventy-three jade plaques, which would have once belonged to the Beidongshan tomb owner’s jade suit, survived.  These were scattered in the main chamber and tomb passages after incursions by local farmers in 1954, resulting in damage and theft.

I had tried to visit this tomb several times, and finally succeeded in 2006. By special arrangement a guard came to unlock the gate for me and Professor Li, the Director of Xuzhou Museum. The ground outside the tomb was used by local farmers to dry their grain. The guard turned on the power so that we could see the structure of the tomb. The earthenware tomb guardians in seven niches had been replaced by replicas as the objects are now kept in the Xuzhou Museum.

A strange thing happened during this visit. Soon after we walked down the tomb passage past the tomb guardians, the power went off and we were plunged into complete darkness. Everyone fell silent, expecting that something might happen. At that moment, I felt that time had turned back to two thousand years ago. There was a deathly chill in the air, and the eerie silence made it all worse. It was a very long moment for me – I didn’t panic, but morbidly I started expecting the ghost of the Chu king would appear so that I would at least be able to see what he looked like. But on the other hand, if it did happen, I was worried that I would be locked inside the tomb with him forever.

The guard tried to switch the lights back on several times, but nothing happened. We had no choice but to feel our way back up and along the damp, slippery walls of the passage and give up our journey to the underground palace. It made me appreciate how brave the tomb robbers were to break into these private tomb mansions without knowing the danger below. No wonder it sometimes cost them their lives.

Part 2 next week.

Ceramic Warriors

This is a pretty good impression of what it must have been like for the intruders who attempted to loot the tombs of the Han kings.

All the Han tombs that have been discovered to date were looted to a certain extent; the majority of them in antiquity.   The evidence lays scattered across the tombs; broken artefacts evidently disturbed and in some cases datable bodies of unlucky intruders who fell or drowned in the passageways.  Most interesting is the evidence of the intruders’ superstition and fear of government retribution; plaques from the mythic jade suits lie mixed on the floor, the gold or silver that tied them in place stolen.  The jade remains largely untouched; known as the treasure of the aristocracy this could not be sold on without dire consequences from the authorities.

Those that attempted to break in faced many dangers and obstacles.  Not necessarily booby traps in the style of Indiana Jones, but passageways blocked with impossibly heavy stones, pitch darkness and incredibly steep inclines to the lower chambers.   There were also pitfalls where replica privies had been constructed with sewage holes underneath.  Because the tombs were built into solid rock in many cases, drainage was also an issue and there is much evidence of extensive flooding in some of the tombs.

The greatest danger would have been in the minds of the looters themselves.  The tombs were designed so that on entry the intruder would be faced with increasing signs of the tomb’s supernatural protection; terracotta guards holding weapons, terracotta war horses, and large arsenals on display.  Even the least superstitious mind would be unnerved in such conditions.

Looters in antiquity came for many different reasons.  Some were opportunists, but there are also documented cases of rival warlords and political factions raiding and razing to the ground the tombs both for their wealth, but also in a number of cases as an act of revenge, erasing the rival king’s family history.

Even in the 20th century the tombs remained at risk, a modern example being the loss of the jade suit of the Beidongshan tomb.  It is unknown how much of the suit remained at the time, but only seventy-three jade plaques from Beidongshan jade suit survived following a break-in by local farmers in 1954.

For their protection any uncovered tombs were systematically excavated in the 80’s and 90’s, their treasures housed in Museums.  Fortunately the wealth of objects that were stored in the Han tombs was so vast that large numbers of beautiful and important pieces have survived to the present day – one can only imagine the splendour of the tombs when they were first built and untouched.

Lucy Theobald, Press Officer

Below one of the young people involved Toby Forshaw talks about the making of the film, which is screening at the Arts Picturehouse Cinema on Monday 10 September 2012.  The project was led by the Arts Picturehouse Cinema and Cambridgeshire Film Consortium.

Blog post by Toby Forshaw, one of the young filmmakers from Jumpcuts

Our project, overseen by filmmaker Ryd Cook, was to produce a film inspired by The Search for Immortality exhibition at the Fitzwilliam museum. It was to be part documentary, part fiction.

We were each to write our own fiction sequence and they were all to be incorporated in the film. With this in mind we visited the exhibition to seek inspiration. It was awesome and we all found something to use.

We embarked on our shoot, beginning with exhibition footage, including the objects we had chosen. We interviewed members of staff, including the curator, Dr James Lin, who told us about the history of Han China and the beliefs and customs of Han Chinese burial.

The drama corps Indefinite Articles were, like us, producing a piece inspired by the exhibition. They described how the exhibition informed their work.

Then to screenwriting! Helped by screenwriter Rick Harvey, we turned our six scenarios into a cohesive narrative. This was shot indoors using green screen, and on location by Byron’s Pool and Grantchester Meadows.

We had an animation workshop with Lizzy Hobbs, where we made animation cells to give added dimensions to our film. We created animated sequences, backgrounds and demons!

Two weekends of editing, and our film emerged. We are very proud of it and honoured to be part of this fascinating exhibition. We hope watching it is as enjoyable as making it and that it helps enrich people’s experience of the exhibition.

Louise Jenkins

Part of our role as technicians, is to find ways to support our diverse collection when they are on display. Often we use Perspex, an inert plastic that is pliable when heated.  Its malleability enables us to produce custom made stands/mounts for individual objects in order to display them safely and to their best advantage.  Some parts of our collection, such as jewellery, coins or small fragmentary items are best displayed with the use of discreetly placed pins.

Given the wide variety of objects in The Search for Immortality we used both custom made mounts and pinning at various points.

A comparatively small window of only two weeks existed to complete the various display stands and mounts for the objects.  This was a complex process as we also had to work closely with the couriers from China.  The role of the courier is to insure the complete safety of their museum objects and the Chinese were unused to seeing objects pinned or mounted on plastic.  Our mounting methods differ significantly from those used in China, so we had to show how these techniques worked in our own collections.

A trip was made to our Greek gallery to show the Chinese couriers examples of fragile material secured with pins. The pins are made of stainless steel, cut and bent to shape then sleeved with a polyethylene tubing to prevent any scratches to the objects surface. We also showed them heavy objects successfully mounted on Perspex.

In particular we needed to negotiate how to mount the jade objects, and it was agreed that we could use Perspex to mount them. However, we had to concur on the fine details of how this would be done, including the angle.   These objects have a highly polished surface and the obvious concern was their ability to slip.   The couriers initially asked for them to be set at 40 degrees.  After some discussion, we agreed on 60 degrees on the basis that it would be otherwise hard to view the underside of the pieces.

Jade dragon on a perspex mount

Couriers accompanied us and four jade objects to our museum workshop where firstly, drawings on Perspex sheet were made to mimic their forms.  With the use of a variety of workshop equipment, such as our band saw, hand files and milling machine, we cut, shaped and polished the Perspex until transparent.  The fashioned stand was then secured into a Perspex block which acts as the stabilising plinth.

Other objects that needed extra focus were those made of metal.  Particular care had to be taken when pinning the iron sword fragments as mineral deposits on their surfaces were loose and had the potential to flake away at the lightest touch.  Equally the gold items are soft and easily scratched.

Gold bar being put in place

The challenge of mounting well over 300 objects in two weeks was finding subtle, safe design solutions to produce quality stands as efficiently as possible.  In the end we succeeded in creating mounts that display the objects beautifully and were very well received by our colleagues from China.