Page 451 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

HEJIACUN Chang'an (the present-day city of Xi'an), the capital of the Tang dynasty, is situated on the
Guanzhong plain of the Wei River, an important tributary of the Yellow River. During the Tang
AND OTHER dynasty, with more than a million inhabitants, it was probably the largest and most cosmopoli-
tan city on earth, planned according to ancient precepts on a grid system, with the palace and
1
DISCOVERIES AT administrative area in the center of the northern sector of the city. The city's 108 walled wards
were further subdivided by main streets running north-south and east-west that intersected in
XI'AN, SHAANXI the center of the wards. The names and locations of these wards can still be traced through
contemporary records and archaeological excavation. One fragmentary work, written by Wei
PROVINCE Shu in 722 CE, provides a succinct account of some forty wards in the western sector of
Chang'an, naming more than forty Buddhist monasteries, fifteen Buddhist nunneries, seven
2
Daoist temples, and three "Persian" (foreign) temples. Many of these, like the plan of the city
itself, had been founded under the preceding Sui dynasty, when the capital was called Daxing.
In the words of a modern scholar, Wei Shu's text allows us to imagine "the beauty of the dragon
and phoenix"—that is, of Chang'an in the heyday of its glory. 3
Archaeology provides abundant confirmation of the great scale of the principal buildings
of the capital and of a significant foreign presence. The concentration of great wealth around
the emperor, the court, and the prominent families of Chang'an allows us a glimpse of the be-
liefs and fears of its inhabitants. Rare materials from throughout the known world were brought
as tribute: tremendous faith was put in their intrinsic value, according to their physical proper-
ties of hardness, translucency, brilliance of color, or particular form. When fashioned into the
likeness of real or imagined creatures with numinous qualities of their own, such as the gilt-
bronze striding dragon (cat. 159), an image of imperial power found within the palace precincts,
the resulting objects were extremely desirable and powerful.
Emperor Taizong (r. 626-649 CE) commissioned the tomb of his father (d. 635) and
planned his own considerably grander tomb, Zhaoling, on commanding sites in the Beishan
4
hills, a range running roughly east to west, north of the Guanzhong plain. Altogether, eighteen
of the twenty Tang emperors were buried along the same range. Each of the imperial tombs

included in its precincts the tombs of other members of the imperial family and those of cer-
tain important officials. General Dou Jiao, whose splendid white jade and gold belt is shown
here (cat. 157) died in 646, a mere three years before the death of Taizong. His tomb in
Xianyang is much closer to the Tang capital, perhaps because he died too early to be honored
in this way. The tombs of Princess Yongtai, Prince Zhanghuai, and Prince Yide, which have been
excavated, all lay within the precincts of the Qianling, the tomb of Emperor Gaozong (d. 683)
and Empress Wu (d. 705), but had been robbed in antiquity of their richer contents.
Other major finds in and around Chang'an have come not from tombs but from the sites
of palace halls, monasteries, or private dwellings. Two very different types of finds, hoards and
reliquary deposits, assume major importance. Hoards, hastily hidden in a time of crisis, are
known from the end of the Western Zhou dynasty (771 CE). At that time the Zhou rulers buried

450 E A R L Y I M P E R I A L C H I N A