Page 27 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

since Shen Nong, or Yan Di —the first legendary Emperor Yan. Today, the Chinese people con-
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sider themselves the descendants of the Yan Di and Huang Di emperors. Liang pioneered the
use of Western archaeological concepts and ideas to investigate ancient Chinese history.
During the same period, foreign scientists and archaeologists began to visit China, either
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on their own or in the company of missionaries. Torii Ryuzo (Japanese, 1870-1953) may have
been the first trained archaeologist to work in China. In 1895, Torii surveyed sites dating from
the Neolithic to the Han period and found polished stone axes and spearheads in the Liaodong
peninsula of northeastern China. After surveying the region in 1905 and 1908, he published a
report describing his travels and research, and the anthropological, archaeological, geographi-
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cal, and topographical information that resulted. Torii and other Japanese archaeologists
continued to survey sites throughout China and occupied Taiwan, covering a wide temporal

and geographic range of subjects, ranging from prehistoric burials, ancient architecture,
Buddhist caves, and imperial mausoleums. 12
American, English, French, German, Russian, and Swedish explorers also organized expe-
ditions to China. They left their footprints throughout the northwestern regions and along the
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Silk Road, especially in the provinces of the Xinjiang and Gansu. Among them was Aurel Stein
(1862-1943), a Budapest-born citizen of Great Britain who conducted large-scale geographic
and archaeological surveys in Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang (1900-1901,1906-1908,
and 1913-1916). These surveys yielded valuable information on sites and cemeteries such as the
Mogaoku Grottos at Dunhuang, Gansu; Xixia (Tangut) Yuan dynasty cities at Heicheng, Inner
Mongolia; and the ancient city of Gaochang at Turfan, Xinjiang. 14 Stein is chiefly remembered
for the more than ten thousand paintings, textiles, prints, manuscripts, and other objects that
he removed from the Mogaoku Grottos (the artifacts are now in the British Museum, London;
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the British Library, London; and the National Museum, New Delhi). French, Japanese, and
Russian explorers also acquired a large number of the remaining Mogaoku treasures. Paul Pel-
Hot (French, 1878-1945), procured several thousand works, the second-largest group ever to
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leave China (now mostly in the Musee Guimet, Paris). Langdon Warner (1881-1955) of the
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, removed more than twelve fragments of wall
paintings and a kneeling bodhisattva (now in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Univer-

sity, Cambridge) from the Mogaoku Grottos and transported them to the United States in
1924^; Warner's second expedition to Dunhuang in 1925 was less successful. In 1930, the Fogg
trustees persuaded Stein to conduct yet another "survey" under the Fogg's aegis, in northwest-
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ern China. When Chinese academics protested, this survey also failed. Many Chinese archae-
ologists characterize Stein's and others' activities in China as plunder and dao jue (unlawful
excavations).
Geographer and explorer Sven Anders Hedin (Sweden, 1865 -1952) approached explora-
tion from a different perspective. He conducted archaeological, geographic, meteorological,
and palaeontological surveys from 1893 to 1935 in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner

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