World Rhino Day | Rhinos are extinct in China, so how can we talk about "telepathy"?

September 22 is World Rhino Day.

Rhinoceros, a creature that is both familiar and unfamiliar to the Chinese.

There are no wild rhinos living in China today, but our speech and rhino imprints are everywhere. Friends and lovers who understand each other well are called "heart to heart", the mythical beast that deters floods is "water-controlling iron rhino", and there is a classic Peking Opera piece called "Tongtian Xi"...

Sumatran rhino at Ohio Zoo | Ltshears / Wikimedia Commons

I used to wonder why an exotic creature would leave such a deep imprint in our culture. Later I realized that the Central Plains was once the home of rhinoceros. In the National Museum of China, there is a bronze rhinoceros urn with inlaid gold and silver cloud patterns from the Western Han Dynasty, which is a testimony to the close coexistence of ancient Chinese and Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis).

Rhino from the Clouds

This bronze rhinoceros is sturdy, about half a meter long and weighs about 15 kilograms. A belt is wrapped around its waist and abdomen, and a small copper lid is attached to the belt. Gently open the lid and we can see the "true face" of this bronze rhinoceros - in fact, it is a hollow container.

A bronze rhinoceros urn from the Western Han Dynasty, now in the collection of the National Museum of China | BabelStone / Wikimedia Commons

When the bronze rhino was first unearthed, cultural relics experts found various bronze mirrors and lacquerware in the hollow belly of the rhino, indicating that the last owner used it as a storage box. But in fact, the real purpose of this bronze rhino is to hold wine . Although it is bulky, as long as you use the principle of leverage to gently lift the rhino's hips, the rhino's head will lower and the wine will flow out from the mouth of the pot on its head.

Bronze wine vessels in the shape of animals were common in the pre-Qin period, but rhinoceros-shaped ones were extremely rare. What's even more amazing is that this rhinoceros is covered with clouds made of gold and silver. Using a technique of inlaying gold and silver, ancient craftsmen first made cloud-shaped grooves on the surface of the bronze rhinoceros, then filled them with gold and silver threads, and polished them. When this rhinoceros is finally presented to people, we may have an illusion that it has just passed through colorful clouds and walked slowly from the mythical world.

The "Xiao Chen Zhu" rhinoceros urn unearthed in the late Qing Dynasty is also a Sumatran rhinoceros | Asian Art Museum of San Francisco / Wikimedia Commons

The decoration of the bronze rhino urn is full of romantic colors, but its main shape is realistic. We can see that the rhino has two horns on its head, the front one is larger and the back one is smaller, which is a typical feature of the Sumatran rhino. Its head-to-body ratio, skin wrinkles, and number of toes are also the same as those of the Sumatran rhino . This also means that the bronze rhino urn is not a product of the imagination of the ancient craftsmen, but a small-scale model made after real-life observation .

However, how did the Sumatran rhino, a creature that now lives in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, come across the craftsmen of the Central Plains during the Western Han Dynasty? Hidden behind this is the tragedy of the Sumatran rhino leaving its homeland.

Rhino's retreat

Sumatran rhinoceros' diet depends on forest supplies, and its mud bathing habit depends on a humid climate, which makes us mistakenly believe that only the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia can meet their survival needs. However, archaeological evidence shows that the remains of Sumatran rhinoceros are also buried in Neolithic sites in Gansu and Shaanxi . In other words, there were vast forests and abundant rainfall in northwest China at that time, which was not only the home of humans, but also the paradise of Sumatran rhinoceros.

Sumatran rhino calf | International Rhino Foundation / Wikimedia Commons

Unfortunately, the coexistence of humans and rhinos did not last long. After entering the historical period, with the expansion of agriculture and climate change , the forests in the northwest gradually decreased, and the living space of the Sumatran rhinoceros gradually shrank to the south. Even so, the Sumatran rhinoceros did not completely disappear in northern China. Until the Han Dynasty , there were still wild Sumatran rhinoceroses living here. For the craftsmen who made the bronze rhinoceros vases at that time, it was probably not difficult to see the real appearance of the Sumatran rhinoceros with their own eyes.

The number of Sumatran rhinos continued to decrease, and human desire continued to expand. The army needed rhino skins for armor, doctors used rhino horns for medicine, and emperors and generals wanted to keep rhinos in the palace for viewing. At the same time, people's destruction of forests eroded the rhino's habitat . After the Tang and Song dynasties, not only had the Sumatran rhinos become extinct in the north, but it was also difficult to find traces of the Sumatran rhinos in most parts of the south.

Sumatran rhino mother and cub | International Rhino Foundation / Wikimedia Commons

When the Sumatran rhinoceros migrated southwards and finally left the hinterland of China, it became a vague memory in the minds of the Chinese. Craftsmen in the Western Han Dynasty were still able to depict the posture of the Sumatran rhinoceros vividly, but craftsmen in the Ming and Qing dynasties could not figure out where the rhinoceros' horns grew. The Sumatran rhinoceros disappeared from the Chinese people's vision, and only the sculptures, bronze ware, poems and legends of the time were preserved.

The Kaifeng River-suppressing Iron Rhinoceros, cast in the Ming Dynasty, has its horns mistakenly placed on top of its head and its toes resemble those of a cow, which is far from a real rhinoceros. | Greg kf / Wikimedia Commons

Many things that leave will come back, such as migratory birds that migrate south for the winter and schools of fish that migrate north. However, the retreating Sumatran rhinoceros may never return to its homeland .