Archive for June 23rd, 2009

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China Travel – Site of the Shanglinhu Yue Kiln

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

The Shanglinhu Yue Kiln is located in Shanglinhu of Cixi County (formerly of Yuyao County), Zhejiang Province.

Shanglinhu Site was one the key producing areas of the Yue Kiln Celadon. First built during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), the Yue Kiln flourished during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and Five Dynasties period (907-960). The celadon was famous both near and far, and held an important position in Chinese pottery history.

Developing in the Eastern Han to the Sui Dynasty (581-618), early Yue Kiln pottery was simple in style. Until the Tang Dynasty, the pottery-making techniques had achieved great improvements and the pottery industry had developed to a high level, as well. The archaeological evidence proved that the Shanglinhu Yue Kiln started producing exquisite pottery tributes especially for the emperors as early as in the late Tang Dynasty.

During the Five Dynasties and Ten States Period (902-960), official kilns were built in Shanglinhu and other places devoted strictly to producing pottery as tributes to the imperial family. Such items adopted advanced color-glazing crafts and were decorated with gold, silver and copper edges, including patterns of rare animals, fish, tortoises, flowers, grass and human figures that employed carving, enchasing and other techniques.

The Shanglinhu Yue Kiln Celadon has won a great reputation due to its high quality and exquisite design. Since the Tang Dynasty, the celadon has been sold to Korea, Japan and Arabian areas via Mingzhou and Hangzhou cities.

(Source: chinaculture.org)

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China Travel – Qujialing Site

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Qujialing Site is located in Qujialing Village, 30 kilometers southwest of Jingshan County in Hubei Province.

Discovered in 1954, Qujialing Site comprises village ruins from the Neolithic Age. Qujialing Culture, which dates back 4,000 years, was named after the site due to its typical features.

The most distinct cultural relics unearthed at the Qujialing Site were a pottery wheel used for spinning, painted black pottery and eggshell-shaped painted pottery. Pieces of pottery, such as the cauldron, dou (a bowl with high stem and spread foot) and bowl were all fashioned in a special style. Such examples of the culture are distributed throughout a large area that spreads from the Jianghan Plain in Hubei Province to the mountainous region in Shanxi Province to southern Henan Province, which borders with Hubei Province. A large number of tools and japonica rice chaffs also unearthed at the site indicate that the Qujialing people relied mainly on agricultural production, supplemented by raising livestock, fishing, spinning and weaving. At the time, the agriculture and handicraft industry became separate divisions of labor, and ceramics were highly developed with great varieties and fine patterns. The advancement of the agricultural industry and the appearance of ancient pottery that symbolized an admiration for paternity indicate that the society had developed into a patrilineal society.

(Source: chinaculture.org)

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Chinese Culture – Four-, Five- and Seven-Character Poetry

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Four-, five- and seven-character poetry are the most common forms of Chinese traditional poetries.

Of the three forms, four-character poetry came to being at the earliest time. Feng (The Book of Songs) and Ya (Odes and Epics) of Shijing (Book of Poetry) are basically four-character poetries. A lot of four-character poetries were also found in some other ancient books and records before the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) such as The Records of the Great Historian and Zuo’s Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals. Therefore, it is obvious that four-character poetry was the prevailing from of poems both for entertainment and sacrifice in the whole society from the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century BC-711BC) to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC).

Four-character poetry gradually declined after the Spring and Autumn Period, but a lot of people still wrote in this form, such as Cao Cao and his sons as well as Ji Kang in the Three Kingdoms Periods (220-280), Lu Ji, Lu Yun and Tao Yuanming in the Jin Dynasty (265-420). Among theoir works, some excellent ones are still popular today.

Five-character poetry also has an early origin. In Shijing (Book of Poetry), there were some five-character poems, but their formal rise was in the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD). Compared with four-character poetry, the five-character poetry has an additional rhyme, and thus has a bigger capacity for expressions and more space for the variations in the line.

There was significant development both in folklores and literary works in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220). Ban Gu was the first intellectual that engaged himself in writing five-character poetry, which marked the beginning for literati to learn new forms from folk art. Later, five-character poetry attained a very high level with the emergence of abundant poems. In the reign of Jian’an in the Three Kingdoms Period, five-character poetry entered its booming period and overwhelmed four-character poetry.

Seven-character poetry also originated in Shijing (Book of Poetry), Sichou Shi by Zhang Heng in the Eastern Han Dynasty was the earliest work of seven-character poetry by intellectuals, and Yangexing (Sumptuous Feasting Song) by Cao Pi is generally considered the first mature work of seven-character poetry. In the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-420), this form of poetry was not considered as important as five-character poetry. In the early Tang Dynasty (618-907), seven-character poetry began to prevail and some excellent works appeared.

This form has more characters than four- and five-character poetry, and can express more complicated and complete ideas with a longer and slower intonation. After the Tang Dynasty, five-character and seven-character became the principal forms of traditional poetry and four-character poetry was on the decline as time went by.

（Source: chinaculture.org）

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