Treasures of the Past

MC: Good evening and welcome to Jade Nights. By now I hope you've had a chance to have a look around at the exhibition. WA Museum, Boola Bardip, is proud to present this extraordinary story about the legacy and afterlife of China's first emperor. Thank you for joining us tonight. The evening's expert talk is presented by Dr Qian Gong, course coordinator of the Chinese major, Bachelor of Arts at Curtin University. Before moving to Australia, many years ago, Qian covered archaeology news for the daily China Daily. Over the next 30 minutes, she's going to tell us about some of the key archaeological discoveries of this ancient mausoleum. Welcome.

Dr Qian Gong: Good evening, everyone. I'm very grateful to be here. And, And I want to thank the Terracotta Warriors for bringing us together tonight. So, yeah. When I was first approached to talk about, Terracotta Warriors, I was very excited. But at the same time, also had, lots of doubts. Because we all know archaeology is a very, specialized field of science. You know, my research field is, Chinese contemporary media studies and culture studies and even when I was in, in high school, I should say history is one of my worst subjects. So, so, I stand here with, very high level of insecurity. So, I'm also, hoping that, with, very intelligent looking and cosmopolitan audience here, if you know, a lot more, about, Terracotta Warriors, please. Yeah. Just treat me as, a layman here sharing the excitement about this, eighth wonder of the world 2000 years ago. And I invite you to be in dialog with me as well, and maybe, share with me a couple of things that you know that I do not know yet.

Okay. So, tonight I want to, focus on telling, sharing with people, you know, we come over here. We, of course, at the Terracotta Warriors, they are quite striking and interesting. But there are lots of other things, you know, like bronzewares and some, some, some, some pot looking stuff and, and glass looking stuff. What, what what's so interesting about them? You know, I said, I want to share, a bit more, you know, sort of a context of, this wonderful artifacts in their original, place and, and history, period of history so to speak, and the emphasis will be on bronzeware because, if we say if China, you know, China is known for the Great Wall of China, for the terracotta Warriors, but bronzeware is definitely the one of the top two, I would say. Yet a really important part of our, cultural history.

Okay, so, we'll get started. Okay. First of all, I do have some connection with the Terracotta Warriors. Even though, you know, I can't say much about my archaeology knowledge.

So, in the 1990s, in the early 1990s, I, was employed by China Daily and features painting and as a feature writer. I was very young then, and very ambitious, you know, really wanted to. So as a feature writer, you want to, take hold of, a subject area? That's interesting, but also, it's kind of can produce big news. Yeah. So, when I went there, one of the older colleagues said, yeah. You want to go on this front page, go for archaeology.

So, we call them these this area of specialty beats, right? Yeah. So go for the archaeology. So, I, I since then I've been pestering, my, the editor, my line manager is like, can I do archaeology? Can I do archaeology? And so that's actually her beat. So, and when she kind of, retreated bit from, writing and focus on more editing, she passed on this baby of Her's, archaeology to me. And then in 1994, there was this big event, that everyone's anticipating, that is the official launch of the excavation of the second tomb. of the mausoleum.

So, we know that the man tomb was never touched because, that was big worry that, according to history King, the emperor actually, had in place lots of secret devices. There's the, you know, like the pyramid. There's, all these bells and whatever. If you go there, there's something bad will happen to you. And the main tomb actually said to, has rivers and mountains replicas built, in the tomb. The rivers actually, reputedly, are made of mercury. Okay, so that's according to his historical record.

But later on, people tested the soil on top of the Qin tomb, and they found that actually, the percentage of the mercury is about 400 something times more than normal. So it could be, oh, this all could be true.

So, and plus, we're not so sure we can properly protect those, artifacts. You know, the, Terracotta Warriors, they do not. They did not look earthen like this when they first, when they first uncovered, they actually painted with colours. Okay. And another thing, you notice that every single, terracotta warrior has a single eyelid, and that's not very realistic, right? Because they supposed to be a realistic depiction of the soldiers then. So how come everyone's just single eyelid?

And later on, they discovered actually they that the folded eyelids were painted on. And then after they were excavated, that paint disappeared. So, every, every single soldier became single fold eyelid. So, people weren't so sure that they could probably protect that.

So, the main of course, the what we see today, those army warriors are the guarding tomb of the main tomb. Yeah. And there were four of them that we discovered so far, the guarding tomb. So they, second tomb in 1994 was going to be officially excavated. And I, you know, I fought for the opportunity to go there. And of course, you know, went, very excitedly with my, colleague, the, at that time, we have a photographer, and went there and, and that's a picture of me with an archaeologist, on the site. And after that, I wrote some articles I still have. Yeah. Great fun. And you can see that, by the time the second tomb was, being excavated, people had a bit of experience. They covered it up the whole site. And, so, when the archaeologist was, were working, on the site you can kind of, look down and see them, in the process of working.

Yeah. Okay. So when I was thinking about what to talk about tonight, I asked, a good friend of mine, Andrew McDonald. So, he learned some Chinese, and he supposedly to know, what Australians know about China. So, I said, you know, how do I pitch it? Like, how much do. Yeah. He said, you know, people know that the Qin Emperor, you know, United China, blah, blah, blah, I guess they're not so sure about before Qin and after Qin, I said, oh, okay. Thank you. And that's easy. And then I thought about it. It's not easy. And that just leaves me with 6000 more years to talk about yet! So, I want to through a little bit, the dynasties that, came before the Qin Dynasty. Qin Dynasty, although very powerful, whatever you know about China has a lot to do with the Qin Emperors doing, for example, the Great Wall. Yeah. For example, they the Chinese character that we know today. Yeah. He actually unified that, and the Terracotta Warriors cause, you know, buried underneath, but it's [the Qin Dynasty] very short. It's like 15 years. Yeah. So, what's before that? Is three very long dynasty royal rule. That's considered the golden age of Chinese history.

The first one is the Xia. So, in Xia. We uncovered lots of artifacts, but according to historical record, you know, there's this person called Da Yu, you know, had a great, did great jobs controlling the flood. There was like, Christian history, you know, there was big flood, blah, blah, blah that we could never we have never uncovered a written thing that says, this is Xia. Yeah. So that's, is discrepancy between the archaeological record, and the written history of Xia. Yeah. But anyhow, it existed. And after that, Xia was properly recorded everywhere, you know, in history books as well as archaeological finds.

Yeah. And then the Shang. But the stories of Shang Emperors of is also intertwined with lots of mythical stories. And if you are interested in popular culture, not long ago, there was, film, on show here. It's a trilogy on the first one called The Creation of Gods, and that's about the Shang Emperor and the important one Cho Wang. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, it's like a mystery. There's lots of, you know, supernatural, gods, etc. entwined with the Shang Emperor.

After that is the Zhou Dynasty. And that's Zhou was when all the, you know, all the important stuff, about China. The order you know, the rule, the ethics, everything came into shape.

Confucius actually devoted his life, tried to restore the Zhou rule. You know, in his mind, Zhou is great. You know, all these, virtues. You know, Zhou was in disarray by the end of Zhou dynasty. Wow. When where, a when, Confucius lives. Yeah. So, if we compare the onset of Qin Dynasty, what's what sort of era is that?

Okay, I can, we, I can think of is, William Yeats poem: ‘The central cannot hold’ Yeah. It was considered, everything. It's so the Zhou, Zhou King was not called emperor then, right? The first emperor was Qin Emperor. He had this system of Fengjian (feudalism) So basically, he's the king, but he there's lots of smaller kings. You know, each one was given a province, a state to, look after. The best thing about that is when, though, all those kings became quite ambitious, and they want to be the big king, right? So, they start to fight with each other.

And that was the, you know, the, the time when Qin Emperor, who's, the king, King Shi Huang, yes, he's the extremely clever one, a big strategist, as well as powerful and cruel. Yeah. So, you can see Qin on the side, and it's kind of on the west side of, the country at that time on the central plain, was considered to be barbarian, really, by the, you know, those in the central plans. But it's a very powerful stage. They the place it's basically, very well known for, Oh, it's a wheat belt, basically. Yeah. People eat pancakes and buns and, and last, you know, very, very strong, lots of strength. So, when you fight, apparently, the Qin soldiers, they had these, helmets, right, and they will drag with them a few goats. And they would take these, this very, stuffy, pancakes with them. Yeah. So, when they arrive, at a certain place, of course, they have horses quite fast, and they will kill the, the sheep and they will use these helmets as, as a pot. And then they will put the meat in and then they will break their bread and throw into this. And so today, if you go to Xi’an the capital of Qin, you can still have this kind of food: Yeah. Yangrou paomo. And that's one of the secrets that, helped the Qin soldiers to win, the war against the other six states. Warring states. Yeah.

Okay. So, And. Yeah. So, then there's, Shang the Zhou and then Qin came to power.

Yeah. So that's, a little bit history of, the whole period before, Qin came to power. So, when you go into the exhibition, you will see, lots of, bronzewares. Yeah. I want to start with, why bronze smelting was so important, and bronzewares why bronzewares are so central to, that period of, history.

Yeah. So, according to archaeologists, as early as 4000 B.C., that's more than 6000 years ago, a copper smelting workshop. The earliest known in history was discovered in a place in between today's Jordan and Israel. So, at the time, people already started to make copper and make bronze tools. So, it is very important because with the advent of hard and sharp bronze tools and weapons, humanity has basically entered a phase of accelerated development, leaving behind the arduous stone age. And people gained a sense of mastery over nature. Imagine, like, okay, you can wear the sheepskin as clothes, but if you have scissors and you have metal needles, and then you can cut the sheepskin into different shape and you have fashion, right? And you have culture. So bronze tools, they are very, very important. Yeah. And the objects, you know, gradually become this finally crafted tools, gradually become ritual vessels, and music instruments and offerings in separate ceremonies and objects of aesthetic appreciation.

So as a result, human civilization then reached, very new stage. This is why Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey, Blainey, remarked that when humans use blazing fire to extract metal from ore, it was one of the most important days in world history. Yeah, it is still so important essential to our life here. In WA, right? It's all about. Ore and extracting something metal out of the whole except is just iron, instead of bronze. Yeah. So, bronze actually isn't naturally bronze coloured. It's, alloy. And depending on the mixture of the metal, the colour can vary a bit. When a bronze object is first made, you, it usually comes out bright, shiny gold, just like gold. Golden yellow. Really Eye-catching. So, it's only after a certain, long period of time, once it started to corrode, it started to develop into this green, greenish patina that we know as bronze colour today. So how did humans figure out how to make this kind of metal? Well, so I now have a little quiz for you. There are only two metals that occur in pure form on the Earth's surface. What are they?

Have a guess. Two.

Gold. Yeah, yeah. Copper and gold. Very good. 100%. Yeah. So, if you happen to find a good source, you can use them straight away. Basically. You dig it? No need for smelting and just heat them up and hammer them into shape. Yeah, but gold usually, mostly found as gold dust and or flakes. So, it's not very great for making tools or vessels.

And that made copper the first metal humans, really started to use. So, as I mentioned before, people probably first noticed copper because it's very attractive. Golden, shiny, beautiful. Yeah. Especially native copper. But it's also quite soft and easy to bend and walk. Right. So, people started to find by accident, by chance, you know, chance actually turned out to be more useful than necessity sometimes in human history.

Yeah. By chance, they found that actually, if you put something else in the bronze can be a lot tougher and steadier and, you know, easier to use, lasts a long time. So, we, they started to develop, different, bronzewares. One good example of this bronzeware is the sword of the King. Okay. This sword was in the Warring States period of time. So basically, before the Qin Emperor before what you see today, over 2000 years ago, it was, made, constructed. When it first discovered, actually, worker happened to knock his finger onto the edge of the sword and immediately started to bleed.

So, it was sharp as ever. And there's no sign of corrosion.

So, they did, some kind of tests and found that actually different parts of the sword were made of different type of bronze, alloy. Okay. You know, to make it as sharp as something, I'm not great with chemistry, but, you know, to make it pliable, you add something else in different parts of this sword. Yeah. So, by that time, you can see by the Qin Emperor time people were already quite good at this technique. However, we have to say bronzewares were, strictly, upper class, ruling class sort of toy. Because China actually, is quite poor in terms, of copper reserve. We have, copper mines, but these kind of in the southern, southwest part of China, quite far away from, the Qin capital, you know, so it's possible. Yeah, it's only they, they, the, the rulers can't have the power to shift to transport the, the copper, to, over a long distance to where it's used, it's melted.

Also, the technologies, they were cutting edge. You would, you know, you probably thinking of, I don't know, Tesla or something of today. It's only, you know, Elon Musk, or whoever, has access to that.

Yeah. And also, the bronzeware, you know, on the bronzeware you see this very intricate patterns of beasts, animals, etc. and they were for ritual purposes, for religious purposes and those who were controlled by the ruling class as well. Yeah.

So, what are these things. Yeah. And, you know, you see some pots, you see some containers. And a yeah, it's quite weird. Like what, what, what are these things for.

The first very important thing you can't miss is [the] Ding [pot]. This is, this can be square, can be round with three ...So it's a tripod, three legs quadrant. Yeah. And what's it mainly used for? It meant to be, a pot, basically. So, China, it is a cookware, basically.

Yeah. So, all the main important bronzes, bronzewares on display here, can be categorized into, 4 or 5 categories.

The first one is cookware,

The second one is drinking ware, like, wine drinking, you know, wine glass and, and. Yeah, the dispenser as well. Yeah.

And the third type is water containers.

And then there's musical instruments as well.

Yeah. But you know, cooking very important. Yeah. So, this is, at that time, there's no, you know, we think of a Chinese food. What? What techniques? The cooking style. What do you think? What came to your mind? A Chinese food. Stir fry, right. Yes. Stir fry. Actually, at that time, there wasn't stir fry. Because stir fry, you know, you need the iron, I know, like a wok, right. This is not very easy to stir fry, right.

Okay. So, stew at that time. You know, it's a main thing, and you can put food in there and, here, you can have, a little barbecue as well. Yeah. Over the top. So, on the left, you have the most important Ding in Chinese history, because it's a big thing, is huge, is weighs about a ton. Yeah. And we'll talk about how you cook in that. Yeah. On the Ding, and other bronzewares, you can see this very intricately, beautifully inscribed patterns. They're usually mythical beasts.

Here. You have a Taotie. As a mythical animal who devours people, basically. Yeah. Well, you know, we're talking about 2000 years ago. People are a kind of, I don't know, have a very special, aesthetics, bit scary. Yeah. So, if you it's stylized, but you can see there's, there's the horn, there's the mouths there's the eye, etc.

Yeah. Okay. So, let's jump to, this another cookware Dou. It's, it's a, like a display plate. You put, you put some candies on it, etc.

And then you have Gui, this is an important one as well. It's, very big bowl with a cover, more, much more elaborate than, than the stainless steel one we use today to carry food. Yeah.

This is important one: steamer, a steamer. Okay. Steaming is a very unique Chinese way of cooking. It started so early in China. Yeah, we have lots of food that's steamed. It's Yan, it's called Yan, yeah.

I really love this one. (Dui) What do you think? As it really is the buffet food container there with the same kind of device, you can close it, and you can.

Yeah. And that's Li. It's, it's also a pot. Yeah.

This is container (Xu). Food container. Bring this your lunchbox. Yeah. To work. It's going to be very heavy, But beautiful. Yeah.

And then this one has a handle (You). So slightly better to carry.

Oh, love this one (Gong). Do you know it's the wine dispenser? Yeah. Made it in the shape of, maybe, an ox or something. Yeah. Very heavy.

And this is, your wine cup. In 2000 years ago. Yeah. Called Zun

And this is (He), also, wine. Wine. Why would you call it? A pot? Wine-pot? Okay. A wine-pot again.

This is, for water. (Yi, Jia)

And this is, a big, wine glass, smaller wine glass (Jiao). Yeah. Let's have a closer look at the wine glass. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's really weird. It's. Yeah. I can't use that kind of wine. Glass is definitely going to splash your wine everywhere, right? There's a reason for that. We'll talk about that.

Let's look at this smaller wine glass. Okay. So, for centuries till now, people still couldn't figure out why this wine glass has those two prongs on the top. What's your use? Your wildest imagination. What could that those two for? So yeah. Used. Yeah. Yeah. People think about, you know, the like the, the first kind of guess is that the ancient people have this very large moustache. Right? So, you put you split your, your moustache and put it on to prongs, and then you drink. This is another guess.

Yes. Okay. So easy it's to prevent you from getting drunk. So, when you tip the glass like that, the two things will stop you at an angle. So, you can't keep, finish the wine, your glass. Everyone's trying to quickly finish this, but that's. That's kind of weird, too. Like, why don't you just pour a little bit less into it, right?

It's just a really weird, and then, people, some people saying, say, you could put a little filter, you know, like your coffee filter, right? Yeah. And to, you know, put it on there so it does not sink. But why didn't why don't you just filter it first? Right. Still not working. And then some people say, well, it's such the shape is, in imitation of a certain mythical bird. So maybe that two thing represents certain parts of the bird, but we just couldn't figure out.

Right. And they look really big. And I mean, those things. How many. What firewood you would need to heat it up. Yeah. It's just not very efficient.

Right. And the, you know, remember that thing to put wine in. It's already very heavy. And you put you put lots of wine to it. Who who's going to lift it? Yeah. Who's able to lift it? Yeah. Let's just going to break it.

So really weird and Ding as well as we said so that we come to a very important about this bronze. Where's. Okay. None of that. None of it. Nearly none of it is actually for everyday use. Yeah. So we said bronzewares was actually, controlled, were controlled by the ruling class.

They were sacrificial. I mean, ritual objects for use when you pay tribute to your ancestors for religious ceremonies, not for everyday use. Yeah. So those are very important things.

Let's talk about Ding. Right. The ding, signifies, state power only the king can have ding. Yeah. People, and, and earth to the loss of tombs and usually they burial objects like a Ding or Gui. They are compatible. Exactly compatible with the status of this tomb owner. Yeah. So, if you are noble at certain level, you have seven Ding. Eight Gui or something. If you are, the king, then you are allowed to have nine.

Yeah. There's also the story of nine, the nine Ding. Okay, let's see this story of nine Ding.

So, Ding actually, holds the mandate of the heaven. Yeah. So, if you're going to be the king, you are entitled to use the Ding. And because that's the power given to you by the heaven. Yeah.

So, when the Ding, the nine Ding was passed, were passed from the Xia dynasty to the Shang and then to the Zhou dynasty. Towards the end of the Zhou dynasty, the power of the king was really very weak, right. So that the Warring States started to become really, you know, ambitious and wanted to take over. One of the kings, the king, the king of Zhuang, brought his army and to really near the capital of the Zhou dynasty. So, the king was Zhou King was really worried who sent one of his ministers to meet the Zhuang King and to size him up basically.

So, the as soon as they met, the Zhuang king started to query to ask at a minister the size and the weight of the nine tripods, the nine Ding. So, the minister immediately knew that he had in his mind he's going to take over. Right? So, he became really upset and started to lecture him. And he's saying, like the nine Ding was passed on to us from, you know, the ancestors. We still have them. And as long as they are with us, we have the mandate of the heaven. So, don't you have any ideas! Yeah.

And then after the Zhou dynasty, actually perished and the nine ding were thrown into the Si River. Into a river. So, when Qin emperor took over, the first thing he did is try to get hold of those nine tripods. So, he actually, according to the historical record, he sent a thousand divers to the Si River try to fish out the nine tripods. Did he succeed? No, he didn't find the nine Ding. Okay, so to Chinese that went with the Golden age. Okay. The Qin did not have the mandate to heaven.

Yeah. So, if you have a closer look at that, the many Ding has inscriptions on it Characters, Chinese characters. Usually, this inscription says something about this thing was made for whatever event it was given to you by whoever. And may you keep this at the end. It's like, may you keep this for generations to come. Okay, so it's nothing like a cooking pot. It really is about locking the power, okay, for generations to come.

So, Ding bronzewares are symbols of power. Yeah, they're very, very important. So, but to turn a cookware into something sacred like that. I think only Chinese do that. Yeah, food is just way too important for us. But for everyday use, people don't usually use this. They are actually more likely to use, potteries or, smaller, metal wares.

Yeah. Okay, here's the Han break, inscriptions of the story of Qin Emperor having his divers there to try to fish out the tripods. Well, just now my partner is here today. Today. And he also told me, asked me to share with you that, you see the Terracotta Warriors, none of them seem to hold like a metal weapon. Yeah. What happened to the bronze weapons? Okay, that apparently, was, stolen by the peasants. Uprising peasants. Okay. They were fighting the Qin. The Qin Emperor at that time. And so, they grabbed all those, bronze weapons. And there was a replica of the chariot, the, you know, the horses and, and the and the carts, they, they are very exquisite made. So, the original piece was, never allowed to be exhibited overseas. That's why we only have replica. But have a good look at it, because people, it's just now a friend said, people didn't really realize how important it is. They just walk past. So have a good look at those. Okay. So, bronzewares are important.

And these are the this is a huge, wine cup. And, it was, Guess what? This wine cup was actually found in a peasant's house, and they're using that to store, grain. Okay. So, until, one day was, discovered, that was from the Zhou dynasty. And not only that, I have over here like some you can see some inscription on that. There are four characters that are circled in red that says Zhonghua. Zhonghua is the contemporary name for China. That's for the first time when that name appeared in an archaeological architect, artifact. So, it is really, really important.

Yeah. The other thing that, it's used is for war. Okay. War and rituals, they are both used to keep order, right. But also, music instruments and, there's a, there's I saw on the object list, there's, a chime bell as well. So, these are the ancient instruments found before. Even before the Qin Emperors, age. The whole set. People can still use it to play music. Yeah. So, I'm going to show you, a little bit, of, the music played with this kind of bell

How does that sound? How does that sound? Music. 2000 years ago. Coming to you. The royal music. Yeah.

Okay, so I, I'm not going to talk much about the Terracotta Warriors.

(Referring to a small human figure from Han Dynasty tombs.) So, one of these, this is this comes, as a naked. But it was clothed, and the arms, were made of, wood. So that's why they all corroded. And now you only have, a naked. And I, I have to skip Jade as well because, you know, bronzewares, bronzewares were controlled by the ruling class. And, later on, when bronze became not so rare resource, it lost its symbolic power. But jade kept that power. So, in later generations, it's Jade that's taken as the one that's closely related to ritual and power and immortality, which we are going to talk about later on as well.

Yeah. So, I think I just stop here. Thank you so much for your attention.