More than 300 invaluable relics will be featured at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum from March until June 10, showing the artistic and cultural changes that took place in China from Eastern Han to High Tang dynasties (25-755).
The exhibition, "From Eastern Han to High Tang: A Journey of Trans-culturation," is jointly presented by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and Hong Kong's Leisure and Cultural Services Department, organized by Hong Kong's Heritage Museum and Art Exhibitions China and sponsored by the Tsui Art Foundation.
The cultural relics on display were selected from 46 museums and cultural institutions in 14 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Many of these national treasures are grade-one relics from the most significant archaeological discoveries in the past 50 years.
They include valuable wooden objects of the Han dynasty, pottery guardian figures and Buddhist sculptures of the Northern dynasties, porcelain ware of the Southern dynasties and objects imported from Western Asia and beyond, such as glassware, gold and silverware and gold coins.
At the end of the Eastern Han in AD 220 there emerged a number of political leaders, and the state of fragmentation into which China was plunged lasted for nearly 400 years. Political disarray did not, however, impede cultural development.
The period of the Three Kingdoms, the Jin dynasty and the period of the Southern and Northern dynasties were a time when China was receptive to many foreign influences, particularly from Central and Western Asia, this all-embracing ethos culminating in the glorious Tang dynasty.
To coincide with the exhibition, a series of activities will be organized including lectures and a symposium discussing the trans-culturation of east and west in ancient China from the Buddhist images, ceramic works, gold ware and clothing.
(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2005)
