Three pieces of silk fabrics recreate the shock of the Silk Road!

Spanning 5,000 years, more than 210 pieces/sets of cultural relics from various countries along the Silk Road are gathered in the same time and space, telling the origin, development, exchange and mutual learning of Asian civilization. When you walk into the special exhibition "Exchange and Innovation: Asian Civilization on the Silk Road" at the Zhejiang University Art and Archaeology Museum, you will be shocked to see all this.

How to see so many things? Zhao Feng, the chief curator of this special exhibition and dean of the School of Art and Archaeology of Zhejiang University, specially selected three pieces of silk fabrics from the Tang Dynasty to take you into the history of communication of ancient human civilizations.

One Piece Luo: Embroidered Golden Peacock

In the exhibition hall, there is a square piece of fabric, the base of which is a gauze fabric, and the surface has fine yarn holes, which is light, thin, ventilated and cool. For thousands of years, it has been hidden in the underground palace of the Famen Temple Pagoda in Fufeng, west of the Tang Chang'an City.

In 1987, after a heavy rain, half of the Famen Temple Pagoda in Fufeng County collapsed. Today, people can see the underground palace built in the Tang Dynasty under the foundation of the pagoda, which houses the finger bone relics of Sakyamuni Buddha.

From the 7th to the 9th century AD, as a royal temple of the highest standards, the underground palace of Famen Temple also housed a large number of treasures, including a large number of silk fabrics - among which there were more than 700 pieces of fabrics offered by royal emperors such as Wu Zetian, Emperor Yizong of Tang, Emperor Xizong of Tang, and Empress Dowager Hui'an.

Historically, the underground palace of Famen Temple was opened every 30 years, and the Buddha's bones were brought into the palace for offerings, praying for peace and prosperity, and good weather. At the same time, the offerings in the underground palace were updated, especially the silk fabrics. After the last Buddha's bones were brought in during the reign of Emperor Yizong of the Tang Dynasty, the underground palace of Famen Temple was closed from 874 AD until it collapsed in 1987 and was excavated by archaeologists. For more than 1,100 years, these late Tang fabrics have not been disturbed by humans.

This large red embroidered cloth on display was a piece of fabric used to wrap offerings at the time and is about the same size as a handkerchief.

In the middle of the red silk background, there is a pair of peacocks in a Tai Chi shape. Four peacocks of different shapes and echoing each other are embroidered on the four corners, with four butterflies interspersed between them.

The peacock motif may have originated in India, and later became more common in southwest China. The emergence of peacock as a decorative language in China is closely related to regional exchanges among Asian countries.

What is rare is that this peacock is embroidered with gold. The main parts of the peacock and butterfly are embroidered with gold thread wrapped around silk thread.

The use of gold thread for weaving and embroidery is closely related to the communication between the East and the West. Previously, China's silk weaving crafts did not use much gold. After Zhang Qian's diplomatic mission to the Western Regions and the discovery of this trade route, a large number of gold decorations began to appear.

The gold-embroidery technique has been popular since the Tang Dynasty. At that time, gold-twisting was done by hand by craftsmen. Using gold-twisting as decoration is a major feature of the silk weaving and decoration techniques of Famen Temple. The textiles unearthed from the underground chamber of the pagoda represent the highest level of textile technology in the Tang Dynasty, especially the gold-twisting technique, which has had an important impact on the development of weaving and art in later generations.

A piece of brocade: round flowers and winged horses

The enthusiasm of the Western Regions for oriental silk promoted the spread of sericulture and silk weaving technology to the West. After mastering the secrets of silk, many countries and regions combined their own cultures to develop unique weaving techniques and patterns, some of which even fed back to China, the hometown of silk.

Brocade is a complex fabric made of colored warp and weft threads woven into various patterns. It feels thick, has high production process requirements, and is difficult to weave. It was the most precious silk fabric in ancient times.

There is a piece of red-ground celestial horse pattern brocade in the special exhibition, which is a typical winged horse pattern brocade among Sogdian brocades: a winged horse with intricate decorations on its body, a flying ribbon behind its neck, and silk ribbons tied around its leg joints.

Winged horses were a popular theme on the Silk Road. They were found from the Mediterranean Sea to Sogdia in Central Asia and then to Northwest China. They originated from the Pegasus in Greek mythology. Its owner, Perseus, once rode a Pegasus to kill the snake-haired demon Medusa. In the process of spreading to West Asia and Central Asia, the Sassanid Persian style of winged horse patterns was formed.

In the exhibition hall, next to the winged horse, there is a huge round flower. This is also a twill weft brocade, which is a typical round flower pattern of the Tang Dynasty. Round flower patterns can often be seen in many decorations of the Tang Dynasty, such as the caisson in the Tang Dynasty caves of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, gold and silver porcelain, square bricks, etc.

This flower group belongs to the gorgeous precious flower pattern, which is composed of three layers of wreaths: budding flowers, buds, blooming petals and leaves stacked on top of each other, with flowers in leaves and leaves in flowers.

"Compared to the unique shape of the round flower, the precious flower is more elegant, which is a style that only appeared after the heyday of the Tang Dynasty." Zhao Feng said that the large size of the round flower also means that the weaving technology is complicated. The fabric patterns of the Western Regions are often symmetrical and cyclical, but not cyclical, such as the above-mentioned Tianma. "And Chinese fabrics are cyclical, indicating that new jacquard machines have appeared in China." Zhao Feng roughly counted that this blue, green and yellow round flower contains at least six or seven colors, "that is to say, it takes six or seven shuttles to weave each weft line, which is very labor-intensive."

The best-preserved large-flowered fabric in the world is the blue-ground large-nest precious flower brocade biwa bag housed in the Shosoin Repository in Nara, Japan.

A piece of silk: a small space reveals the world

In the last exhibition area of ​​the special exhibition, there are several very small pieces of fabric fragments, which are a collection from the Nara period (said to be) stored in the Horyu-ji Temple in Japan.

One of the small pieces of fabric is only the size of a palm and looks ordinary. If you don't stand in a specific position, it is difficult to find that this piece of milky white silk remnant has very delicate dark patterns: it is the linked beads and round nest patterns popular in the Tang Dynasty.

In 1959, a piece of "Linked Beads and Round Nest Dragon Pattern Silk" was unearthed from Tomb No. 221 in Astana, Turpan, Xinjiang. On the back of it was an inscription in running script with ink: "Shuangliu County, a piece of fine silk in the first year of Jingyun." During the Jingyun period of Emperor Ruizong of the Tang Dynasty, Shuangliu was the birthplace of Shu brocade.

"What is certain is that it and the piece of fabric unearthed in 1959 were both produced in China, and most likely came from Shu." Zhao Feng believes that the silk on display is evidence of exchanges between China and Japan along the Maritime Silk Road. It was brought back by the Tang envoys and eventually preserved in Japan to this day.

During the nearly 300 years of the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese government sent envoys to the Tang Dynasty 13 times, and the Tang government also returned the visit 6 times. Every time the envoys returned to Japan, the Japanese royal family would always offer the Tang Dynasty's token of reply, and then award Tang Dynasty colored silk to princes and councilors and above and their eunuchs. Japan's Shosoin and Horyuji Temple still have a large number of Tang Dynasty silk products, among which Shujiang brocade, large nest double-linked pearl dragon pattern silk, four-rider hunting lion brocade, etc., all have obvious signs of Chinese imported goods.

Zhang Mijia Chen Xinyi