Page 10 - 2020 Nov 30 Christie's Hong Kong Scholars Art Of China

THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

Edited by Hsiung Yi-Ching from an interview with Chang Wei-Hwa

In the 70s when I started working with antiques, there were verifiable, and Chinese history was extended back a few
relatively few reference books and publications in Chinese hundred years. It is still considered one of the most important
on works of art, particularly works of art from antiquity. At cultural discoveries in the history of mankind.
the time China had not yet opened to the world, and Taiwan
had very limited access to information. This posed a great Yuan Fuli was also a pioneer in Chinese archaeology. Together
challenge in the running of the business. with Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-
1960) they conducted excavations in 1921 between October
This state of affair came about because archaeological field and December at the Yangshao Village in Henan. In 1923
work was mainly conducted by western archaeologists from Andersson published the results in a paper titled ‘An Early
th
the end of the 19 century to the mid 1920s. It was not Chinese Culture’, which was edited and translated by Yuan
until 1926 when Li Ji (1893-1987), ‘the father of Chinese Fuli and published as Zhongguo Yuangu Wenhua. Yuan Fuli also
archaeology’, and geologist/archaeologist Yuan Fuli (1893- participated in the Sino-Swedish Expedition between 1927-
1987) conducted surveys in Southern Shanxi leading to the 1935; these contributed greatly to archaeology, mineralogy
discovery of the Neolithic site at Xiyincun and topography of the North West region.
that the first Chinese-led archaeological
excavations in history took place.

In 1928, Li Ji became the head of
archaeology at the Institute of History
and Philology, Academia Sinica, and
between 1928 to 1937, was in charge of
the excavations of Yinxu (Shang Dynasty
remnants) in Anyang, Henan Province,
that astounded the world. The once
mythological Shang Dynasty became
fig. 1 The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art, Issue 35, February 1986
圖一 1986 年 2 月故宮文物月刊 35 期

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