Abstract
While countless monuments and artworks were destroyed all over China at the outset of the Cultural Revolution, archaeological excavation continued to be undertaken and important finds made between the years 1966 and 1970. Archaeology re-entered the public stage in July 1971 when the Palace Museum in Beijing re-opened with an exhibition of Cultural Relics Excavated during the Cultural Revolution. The show was followed in 1972 by two publications with the same title: a high-price folio with reproductions of excavated objects in superior print quality, and a booklet introducing important excavations to a more general public. The same year also saw a re-launch of the country’s most important archaeological journals. The first issues were devoted mainly to the same finds as those featured in the Cultural Relics exhibition and publications. The texts have strong similarities that indicate tight political control. This article examines how the treasures excavated in the Western Han dynasty tombs at Mancheng, Hebei Province, are treated in the publications and analyses how this group of texts was orchestrated to lend ideological legitimacy to the exhibition and publications, thereby securing the recovery of archaeological work. They also laid the ideological foundations for an international travelling exhibition that successfully served as part of China’s foreign policy strategy.
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Notes
- 1.
Another move to distract Red Guard aggression from the Palace Museum in Beijing can be seen in a plan that was allegedly drafted for Peng Zhen, the former mayor of Beijing and one of the highest-ranking victims of the Cultural Revolution. It showed the Forbidden City completely razed and substituted by a “new imperial palace,” supposedly for Peng himself. The revolutionary rage directed against the alleged revisionist Peng Zhen was thus utilized for the preservation of the palace (Ho 2006, 72–73; Martinsen 2010).
- 2.
For an account of the “Destroy the Four Olds” campaign, cf. the chapter “Declaring War on the Old World”, see Yan and Gao 1996, 65–84.
- 3.
The political implications of these connections are indicated by Enzheng Tong who is very critical of Xia Nai: “[Xia Nai’s] authority derived mainly from the authority of the Party; his leadership in archaeology was the concretized leadership of the Party.” (Tong 1995, 196). “Even during the Cultural Revolution, Xia Nai himself was not much affected by this evil storm. Beginning with 1970, when universities and scientific institutions were still closed, and the majority of intellectuals were imprisoned in ‘cowsheds’ or sent to the countryside for re-education, he was personally appointed by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to receive foreign guests and to visit Albania, Mexico, and Peru, carrying out ‘Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line in foreign affairs’.” (Tong 1995, 196–197, n. 9).
- 4.
This was a very early date compared to magazines sponsored by art institutions like Meishu (Fine Arts) or Wenyibao (Literature and Arts), which were re-launched in 1976 and 1978 respectively.
- 5.
Both journals were directed at international audiences: Chinese Literature was published in English (Hsiao 1971), and China Pictorial (Renmin Huabao) in a variety of languages, including Chinese. I quote from the German edition (Kulturgegenstände 1971). The layout and pagination are identical with the Chinese edition.
- 6.
- 7.
This relationship between the articles in Kaogu and the Cultural Relics booklet is not mentioned anywhere but becomes evident in a comparison of the texts.
- 8.
Articles from 1977 and 1978 commemorating Zhou Enlai and Guo Moruo relate that both were informed immediately about the find and gave it high priority, sending an excavation team from the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to assist the team set up by the Hebei Province authorities (Xia 1977, 6; Xia 1978, 221).
- 9.
For detailed information on the tombs, cf. the excavation report published in 1980 (Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan and Hebei Sheng Wenwu Guanlichu 1980); discussions in Western languages include Thorp and Jansen (Thorp 1991; Jansen 1994). On the ritual functions of the tomb architecture, the furnishings, and the use of stone cf. Wu 1997, 148–153; for the cosmological implications cf. Rawson (1999). According to Jessica Rawson, great tombs like these were meant “to realize the potential of the universe and to make that potential manifest for the benefit of the Liu family kings and their associates” (Rawson 1999, 54). Treasures from the Mancheng tombs have been displayed outside of China in numerous exhibitions and studied in the following catalogues, starting with Trésors d’art chinois, Paris 1973 (Elisseeff and Bobot 1973), and including Das alte China, Essen 1995 (Goepper 1995) and The Golden Age of Archaeology Washington, D.C. 1999 (Yang 1999; cf. Yang 2004, 263–266). For a general account of Han tombs cf. Erickson 2010. For recent Chinese-language publications on the Mancheng tombs cf. Zheng 2003, and Lu 2005. Both authors participated in the excavations in 1968 and co-authored the excavation report of 1980.
- 10.
- 11.
“When, however, these tombs and their furnishings are compared to other kingly burials of the period and to pre-Han burials of roughly equivalent local lords, the Mancheng finds do not appear to set any records for either ambition or indulgence” (Thorp 1991, 36).
- 12.
For a detailed study on the popularization of science in the early 1970s, especially in the field of paleoanthropology, cf. Schmalzer 2006.
- 13.
- 14.
For an account of the technical details, the issues of ownership, the production, and the related social costs concerning the Changxin Palace Lamp cf. Barbieri-Low (2007, 10–17).
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Noth, J. (2015). “Make the Past Serve the Present”: Reading Cultural Relics Excavated During the Cultural Revolution of 1972. In: Falser, M. (eds) Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13638-7_8
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