(i)
In the past two years, due to the ravages of the epidemic, offline communication between home has become quite difficult, especially international academic exchanges have almost stopped. However, probably by pre-arrangement, I had many trips in the year before the outbreak of the epidemic: in March 2019, I first went to the City University of Hong Kong to give a lecture. Subsequently, he went to Europe twice, organizing and participating in academic conferences and consulting literature at leiden University in the Netherlands and the French Far Eastern Institute. In particular, the trip to Uzbekistan in the middle of summer and the special experience of going to the Hebrew University in Israel on Christmas Eve left me with unforgettable memories...
Although I am not engaged in the popular "Silk Road" research, I have always had a strong interest in the historical transportation between China and the West. In the first half of 2019, when the institute organized a study trip to Uzbekistan, I was the first to sign up. After that, although the visa application was a twist and turn, it was eventually possible to make the trip.
In August of that year, our colleagues and their party first arrived in Tashkent from Shanghai via Urumqi, then took a long-distance chartered bus to Samarkand, visited the local history museum, watched the world-famous murals of the Ambassador's Hall, and visited timur mausoleums, Registan Square, Bibihanu Mosque and Ulugh Bur Observatory, etc., not only saw the golden beauty at dusk, but also experienced the carnival of Samarkand night under neon lights... We then drove across the Zelafshan River to Bukhara, where we surveyed the remains of the 11th- and 12th centuries Silk Road, visiting the former site of the Rabat-l Malik station on the way from Samarkand to Bukhara and the ruins of the Sardoba Kar well to the southwest. Later, we will arrive at the Summer Palace of emile on the outskirts of Bukhara, and then enter the city of Bukhara. On the sunny day, ascend to the ancient city of Varakhsha, a world cultural heritage site, and wander between the overlooks, thinking about the floating clouds of the ancient history. He then arrived at Timur's hometown of Kesh (also the hometown of Shi Siming, one of the leaders of the Rebel Generals of the Anshi Rebellion), passing by the site of Tiemenguan, which is said to have been visited by Genghis Khan, Yelü Chucai and Qiu Chuji, inspecting the Buddhist ruins of Karatepa in neighboring Afghanistan, visiting the Timez Archaeological Museum, and finally returning to Tashkent by plane. When visiting the National Museum of Uzbekistan, it coincided with the special exhibition of Sogdian cultural relics "Dreaming back to Bukhara" that was on display, which was a successful conclusion for this trip.
Timur Mausoleum
Ruins of sardoba kan'er well
Varakhsha Ancient City
Special exhibition of Sogdian cultural relics of the National Museum of Uzbekistan "Dreaming back to Bukhara"
Uzbekistan is a fascinating and mysterious country with many historical and cultural monuments, among which Samarkand and Bukhara are the souls of the world. Kangguo and Anguo, one of the "nine surnames of Zhaowu" in the medieval historical books, are located near Samarkand and Bukhara, respectively. Among them, Bukhara, translated as "Puhua", "Buhua", "Buhua'er" and "Buhar" in the Ming and Qing historical texts, is now the capital of Hara Oblast of Uzbekistan. It is located in the lower reaches of the Zerafshan River, in the heart of the Bukhara Oasis. According to the study of Central Asian history, the Samanid dynasty from 874 to 999 AD was the capital of the Samanid Dynasty, and its heyday territory once reached the Aral Sea in the north, the upper Indus River in the south, the upper reaches of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya Rivers in the east, and the Caspian Sea in the west, which was the most powerful country in Central Asia at that time, and the city of Bukhara was also the most prosperous city in Central Asia. After the Samanid Dynasty, the area was disturbed and the wind and cranes were alarmed, and the Arab army, the Mongol army and the Timurid iron horse successively whipped up the dust, causing it to suffer from the scourge of war. From the 16th century to 1920, it was the capital of the Bukhara Khanate. It is precisely because it was an important town on the Silk Road in those years, after the prosperity and decline, the changes of dynasties, the places of interest and monuments of the dynasties are extremely numerous, and now it has become a well-known tourist attraction in Central Asia. Before entering the city of Bukhara, we visited the Sitorai-Mohi-Hosa Palace on the outskirts of the city, a magnificent blend of Central Asian and European styles.
(ii)
When we arrived at the summer palace, the book Bukhara: Masterpieces of Central Asia had just been published. According to the description of this book: The summer palace is a country house of the Emir of Bukhara, located on an oasis 4 km north of the city of Bukhara. Many of these palace buildings were built by Bukharan architects in the traditional Style of Europe. It is said that those architects learned Russian construction techniques in places such as St. Petersburg and Yalta, and gradually built this marvelous palace after the 1890s. Among them, the White House and the Bukhara Emir Reception Room are the most exquisite places in this summer palace, designed by Bukhara's master builders between 1912 and 1914. The White House gets its name from the snow-white decoration of the walls and ceilings of the hall.
Summer Palace of the Emir of Bukhara
The porcelain collection in the White House
Among them, the White House currently exhibits porcelain from all over the world. There is a vase with the inscription "Imitation of the Cross of Zhou Ding" with a poem inscribed on it:
Red pink petite, double god, the fangs shake the unique fresh, pick up the leaves should smile, as if the camel is not in the spring.
In the book of Zhushan, Dai Yucheng
This is obviously porcelain from China. The case of "The World's Venerable Flowers, Kaye Smiles" is from the Buddhist document "Five Lantern Society Yuan". "Zhushan" is a hill towering over the center of present-day Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, where the official kilns of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties were located, and often used as a synonym for Jingdezhen. Regarding the "Dai Yucheng" on the porcelain, Chen Shuqun pointed out in his compilation of the "Tasting of the Shallow Painting Plate": "Dai Yucheng's birth and death are unknown, and the famous models are Yucheng and Dai Yucheng. The Xuan Room is a Zhushan Painting Xuan. He was mainly active in 1894 (Guangxu 20th year) - 1917. Dai Yucheng's early shallow works were mainly Based on Bogutu, painting figures, flowers and birds. After entering the Republic of China, he was good at painting lotus flowers in pastels, and the lotus flowers he made were beautiful and dusty. (Hubei Science and Technology Press, 2013 edition, p. 124) Judging from the era when Dai Yucheng was active, "Bing Wu" should be the thirty-second year of Guangxu in the late Qing Dynasty (1906). According to the white house display of exhibits: "Vase. Porcelain, China, The 19th century", marked with a slightly different age.
Previous research generally believes that Chinese light color porcelain was founded by the famous Cheng Men (1834-1908) of the "Xin'an School" in the late Qing Dynasty. Under the influence of Cheng Men, some Huizhou painters who were active in Jingdezhen also participated in the painting of ceramics. Regarding Cheng Men, the Republic of China's "Four Records of Yixian County" records that his person was a WuduTianduan person in Yixian County, Huizhou Prefecture, and was a famous painter in the Qing Dynasty. His sons Cheng Yan and Cheng Ying "each adhered to the court training, and gained the strength of one of their arts, and both made a living in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, by painting magnetic capital." The magnetic objects painted are still precious and precious." The word "magnetic" in the text is also "porcelain". According to other biographical documents, Cheng Men Zi Songsheng, The Number Of Snow Kasa, Kasa Daoren, was active in the Xianfeng, Tongzhi and Guangxu years of the Qing Dynasty, and his people were all exquisite in landscapes, figures and flowers, etc., and later pushed by the world as one of the founders of light color porcelain painting, and later Jin Pinqing and Wang Shaowei became the three famous artists of light color, and their works were like dark incense and shadows, self-indulgent and interesting, and have always been respected by the world.
Judging from the historical documents of Huizhou, a considerable number of Hui people who operated in Jingdezhen after the early Qing Dynasty came from Yi County. Recently, there is a poem "Jingdezhen to YiXian and Qi (Gate) County" that writes:
Yishan Guyi Sangtian is less, and men are more intelligent and Jingxiang. Bid farewell to Tsubaki Xuan from his knees, climb the mountain and cross the water to the Changjiang River. Want to emulate Tao Zhu Nanxiong Town, the avenue is rich and eternal. Parting from the family is getting longer and longer, and the road is far away from the mountains and homesick. Waist wrapped around the rest of the capital Lijing Town, Guanyin Excellency Water Yangyang...
During the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, Hui merchants (especially Yixian merchants) had a profound influence on Jingdezhen (often referred to simply as "Jingzhen"). They not only injected considerable funds into the local area, but also provided new ideas and forms of expression for the creation of porcelain paintings. The traffic from Jingdezhen to Yixian first passes through Qimen County, then to Yuting Town, Yixian County, and then to yixian county seat and the villages in the territory, so the poem along the way will carry Yixian and Qimen at the same time. The aforementioned Cheng Men and Cheng Yan father and son went to Jingdezhen through such a route. Cheng Yan's "Jingdezhen Hedong Map" scroll is still treasured in the Anhui Museum. In addition to Yixian and Qimen Huishang, there are also quite a few Wuyuan people who are active in Jingdezhen. The aforementioned Dai Yucheng is from Wuyuan (now part of Jiangxi Province, but in the Qing Dynasty it was part of Huizhou Prefecture, Anhui), so his works are often written as "New An Dai Yucheng". For example, the inscription on a shallow flower and bird character bottle that has been handed down to the present generation is: "The sunny window is a good bird talk, the flowers are extraordinarily beautiful to this dynasty, a courtyard is warm and fragrant, and there are sunny days in the spring." At the end of the paragraph, it is "New Andai Yusaku". In addition, the porcelain inscription seen is: "The family lives on the second bridge of the West Lake, Qin Huai Mingyue is invited to the cup, the autumn wind is anxious to return to the night, and the Yangtze River crosses the late tide." The subsequent payment was also made "New Andai Yu Chengzuo".
From a stylistic point of view, many of the porcelain in the summer palace of the Emir of Bukhara and the nearby Jacques Castle are mostly light porcelain, and some of them should be from the hands of Dai Yucheng. In the summer palace, there is another porcelain plate, which is quite intriguing. In addition to the pattern, there are also words such as "Xishan Diecui", "Jianghu Night Moon", "Nanpu Return", "Tengge Gaofeng", "Huazhou Chunxiang", "JiujiangGuan", "Magu Xiantan", "White Deer Ancient Cave", "Xuting Smoky Willow" and "Lushan Violent Cloth", which are marked as: "Porcelain dishes, China. The end of the 19th century”。
Among them, "Lushan Storm Cloth" should naturally be "Lushan Waterfall", which canonizes Li Bai's poem "Wanglushan Waterfall". It is this poem that makes the beauty of Lushan Waterfall pass down through the ages, so it is listed as one of the "Ten Scenic Spots of Jiangxi" in later generations. The reason why it was mistakenly written as "Lushan" may be because the pattern writing is written by the painters, who only understand it according to their limited literacy ability, and even regard the text as a pattern to draw gourds. Similar examples are common in both artifacts and manuscripts. It is worth mentioning that these pictures also have ready-made similar patterns in the Huizhou Shang Woven Route Map of the Qing Dynasty. For example, "Jiujiang Pass" and "Tengge Gaofeng" have related patterns. Take "Tengge Gaofeng" as an example, in which "Tengge" of course refers to the famous Tengwang Pavilion. At present, many pieces of colored porcelain have also been painted with landscape maps of Tengwang Pavilion, and these porcelains are all depicted on them, carved beams and paintings, intended to show the beauty of the distant mountains and the long sky of autumn water in detail. Pictures of similar themes, in a variety of Huizhou merchant routes, there are poems with another title:
Shengwang Gaoge Linjiangzhu, Pei Yu Mingluan song and dance.
The painting is facing the South Pu cloud, and the bead curtain is rolling in the rain of the western mountains.
Smell the clouds and pond scenery is leisurely, and the stars change for a few autumns.
Where is the emperor in the cabinet now, and the Yangtze River outside the threshold is empty.
The eight-sentence poem is derived from the poem at the end of the "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion", in which the words "sheng", "pei", "wen", "jing", and "ferry" are obviously "Teng", "Pei", "Idle", "Shadow", and "Degree" due to their proximity. These errors are of the same nature as those on porcelain. In addition, in the original text of the "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion", there is "the spirit of the people, Xu Ru under the chen fan's bed", which says that Yuzhang Taishou Chen Fan never received guests, but made an exception for the famous scholar Xu Zhi to set up a special bed, in order to praise the talents of the Nanchang place where the Tengwang Pavilion is located. The "Xuting Smoke Willow" in the "Ten Views of Jiangxi" is related to it. "The face of the Xuan window is always facing the lake, Xuting smoke willow blue blur, raw silk a natural scene, can be compared to the West Lake willow wave nothing" - every early spring, in the rain, the weizi pavilion along the coast of the charming path, the creek willow with flowers, such pictures create a kind of smoke wave vast illusion. Therefore, "Xuting Smoke Willow" and the aforementioned "Tengge Gaofeng" have become indispensable and famous two scenes in the "Ten Scenic Spots of Jiangxi". This "ten-scene map" has a long history, and even in Jiangxi it has a history of hundreds of years. Xu Zhiheng, a person in the Republic of China, mentioned in the "Drinking Streams and Saying Porcelain": "The painting books of the buildings painted between Jia Dao have place names, and there are about the western lake views, and there are also those who paint the ten views of Lushan Mountain." Compared with the "Ten Views of Lushan Mountain", the "Ten Views of Jiangxi" may be more common. At present, the Jiaqing pastel "Jiangxi Ten Jingluo" set of ten pieces, including "Hundred Flowers Spring Dawn", "Lushan Waterfall", "Magu Xiantan", "Nanpu Feiyun", "Shangqing Shengjing", "Tengge Gaofeng", "Xishan Diecui", "Xuting Smoke Willow", "Xunyang Nine Sects" and "Yuling Snow", these ten scenes are slightly different from the aforementioned person, the names of each scene are also different, but the overall style of the cross-light and shadow, the scenery is basically fixed. In this porcelain plate in the Emir Summer Palace, the theme is "Ten Views of Jiangxi" or "Ten Views of Yuzhang", of which "Tengge Gaofeng" is in the center of the picture.
Comparison of the Huizhou merchant route and the porcelain pattern in the Qing Dynasty
According to the general knowledge of the history of painting, "Qiandi" was originally a coloring technique of Chinese landscape painting. The "shallow dai" in ceramics is borrowed from this National Painting term, which refers specifically to the colored porcelain that was popular after the middle of the Qing Dynasty. Light color porcelain integrates poetry, books and paintings, so it is known as "elegant porcelain". His paintings are mainly based on famous mountains and rivers, figures, flowers and birds, and later there are some Gongbi Bogu (also known as Qing Confession), these works are not hurtful and elegant, the wind is beautiful, and it can be described as unique in that year, and the aforementioned Dai Yucheng is the best at this. (See Xu Dahe: Huizhou Calligraphy, Anhui People's Publishing House, 2017 edition, pp. 361-363) Among the porcelain exhibits at the Summer Palace of the Emir of Bukhara and the Château de Jacques, there are also many flowers blooming and twirling, with knots and concentric gongbi Bogu, such patterns that do not paint human figures, which are also quite in line with the overall decorative style of Central Asia.
Jacques Castle in Bukhara
Bogu motifs on porcelain
Decorative motifs of the Summer Palace of the Emir
(iii)
In contemporary times, for most Chinese, travel to Central Asia is not as popular as travel to Europe, the United States and Japan. Against this backdrop, Bukhara also does not seem to be well known to the world. However, if you mention the witty Avanti, everyone is probably familiar with it. This chitostar, who brought joy to many people as children, is said to have been born in Bukhara.
Regarding Bukhara, there are many records in traditional Chinese historical records. In the eleventh year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1413), Ming Chengzu ordered the lieutenant Li Xian to escort the emissaries sent by King Shaharu of Timurid to China, and the delegation arrived in The capital of the Timurid Empire in Hare (present-day northwestern Afghanistan) in October of the following year. Later, Chen Cheng, one of the missions, wrote a book entitled "Chronicles of the Western Regions", which vividly depicted the landscapes, customs and people of the mountains and rivers in various places he visited. According to the book, "Buhua'er City is more than 700 miles west of Samarkand, more than ten miles around the city, and in the middle of the Pingchuan River, the people are rich, the street market is prosperous, and the hukou is tens of thousands." The ground is wet, the weather is mild, and the winter is not attached to the fire. Tuyi grain mulberry hemp, silk cotton cloth, winter food lettuce, cattle, sheep, fish, swans, chickens, rabbits are all available. Later, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Book of The Complete Geographical Works of Nations by karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803-1851), a Prussian missionary, also mentioned: "Bukhara ,...... The city is large and thick, surrounded by twelve gates. The climate is hot, there is no heavy snow in winter, and the grain is one year old and three harvests. Everyone is rich and skilled. Money has gold, silver and copper. Men and women are well groomed. Its rivers produce a variety of fish, and the native heavy bone sheep. Customs move to good and good, and the miles should be as loud as ever. The precious bones of the Kyoshi are heavy sheep's skin, and the crown is a fur, and it is popular for a while. Its sheep are short and thin, but the bones are heavy. There are many black ears, and the flowers are indispensable, all of which are produced here, and at first they were not very pastoral, and since they passed through China, they have made great profits... "The rivers around Central Asia are rich in all kinds of fish, and we have seen a lot along the way, and some are made into dried fish and sold on the side of the road. During the expedition, we also ate scaleless fish from the Amu Darya River. As for beef and lamb, it is a delicacy that is found at almost every meal.
See it along the way from Tashkent to Samarkand
Scaleless fish of the Amu Darya River
Food at the Bukhara Night Market
After the Ming Dynasty, there were many Shanshan merchants in the northwest region. In the journey book compiled by merchants of Xinzhou in Shanxi at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the names of Central Asian countries (or cities) that traded with Xinjiang were listed:
Wulusi, Andijan, Tashkent, Hehan, Shuhuaer, Kazakh, Hongmaoguo, Rao Gaiyi, Yinding, South Road Tangled Head, No Road Cry, Na Busy Gan, Busy Qulan, Black Water Country
Manuscript of The Journey of Shanxi Shang in the Late Qing Dynasty (courtesy of Professor Meng Wei of Shanxi University)
Among them, the "complement" should be Bukhara recorded in folk literature. Another Central Asian city, Anguiyan (located in the eastern part of the Fergana Basin), is also mentioned here, where people are also known for their business acumen. In this regard, Qianlong's "Records of Hearing and Seeing in the Western Regions" written in the forty-second year (1777) has a "Anjiyan" clause in the "Biography of the Outer Domain", which mentions: "Xingjia braved snow and frost, committed dangers, and after years and years, did not profit and did not return, the interior was called Anjiyan Huizi." Regarding this article, seventy-one (No. Chunyuan), the compiler of the Records of The Western Regions, further explained: "Anjiyan and Keshimier are the hometown of merchants in the Western Regions, thrifty and anxious, and habitually infected. Sending traces back to xinjiang, the natives are afraid of going, and if they go, the goods and wealth of their land cannot be circulated, and the Hui people are inconvenienced. This shows that many merchants from Anjiyan should have a lot of money in various parts of Xinjiang, which has a decisive impact on local commercial trade." Some of the merchants in Xinzhou, Shanxi, who were shrewd in breeding goods, went to Dihua (Urumqi), Hashkar (present-day Kashgar), Hami, and Ili, etc., and should seek wealth in that area and win with the aforementioned Anjiyan merchants. According to records such as the Complete Geographical Collection of All Nations, porcelain was quite popular in Xinjiang and all over the western region at that time. For example, Brut (present-day Kirgiz, southern Xinjiang), "between The land and Andijan and Kashgar, the land is vast and the people are ,...... Like The magnets, tea, cloth, tobacco, and wine of China, cherished like treasures." The "magnet of China" here refers to porcelain from the mainland (especially Jingdezhen). Judging from the various types of information available, although this situation is easy to encounter, it has a long history. From this point of view, if the aforementioned Jingdezhen porcelain had flowed into Central Asia around the twentieth century, perhaps many of them were realized through the transfer of trade between Chinese and foreign merchants.