Worth its weight in gold

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Following hard on the footsteps of Harmony and Integrity: The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times (雍正 ─ 清世宗文物大展), a second major exhibition mounted through a collaboration with China has arrived at the National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院). This show, with 115 artifacts, more than half of which are classified as items of the first grade, is if anything a more splendid achievement, despite being from an area outside mainstream Chinese history.

Gold and Glory: The Wonders of Khitan From the Inner Mongolian Museum Collection (黃金旺族:內蒙古博物院大遼文物展) presents artifacts from the nomadic Khitans who harried the borders of northern China for many centuries, established the Liao Dynasty (遼朝, 907 to 1125), and subsequently virtually disappeared from the historical record, probably subsumed by the rise of a unified Mongol army under Genghis Khan and his successors.

Curator Lin Tien-jen (林天人) said the quality of the exhibits is unprecedented. Indeed, the high proportion of first-grade national treasures included in the show led to last-minute fears that the exhibition would not open. Permission for the export of the treasures was granted at the eleventh hour. While museum managers can exult in this administrative triumph (the exhibition sets a record for the number of items of the first grade to be shown in Taiwan), the general public can delight in a most exciting exhibition of artifacts that sheds light on a little-known area of the ancient Chinese world.

This is not the first time that the museum has put on an exhibition related to China’s northern neighbors, but it is by far the most detailed and intimate portrait of a hybrid culture that was created by the nomadic peoples who inhabited the vast regions between the eastern boundaries of Europe and China’s western border. “Originally, we had not decided to focus on the Khitans,” Lin said, “but in planning this exhibition we discovered that the Khitan culture was much more sophisticated than we originally thought. They were enormously open to foreign influences — from Central Asia, the northern steppe, the kingdom of Goryeo (the Korean peninsula) and also northern China — and while they absorbed a lot, they didn’t lose their own cultural identity. This openness distinguished them from many other steppe nomads and may be the reason that they could maintain a substantial empire for so long.”

The importance of the Khitans is emphasized in the manner that the name of these steppe nomads entered the English language as the word “Cathay,” which was once widely used to refer to China.

The first thing one notices about the exhibition is the abundance of gold and silver, favorite materials for the Khitans, so much so that, according to Rex Chou (周維強), an assistant curator for the show, a moratorium was placed on the use of gold for grave goods by the Liao authorities.

Items include intricately worked items for daily use, from silver-embossed saddles to a silver and jade awl-like tool that was carried by Khitan noblemen to give the coup de grace when hunting. The actual items are brought to life in prints of frescoes, also from the tombs, that depict how these items were worn or used. “The general impression that these nomads lived rough is quite misleading. At least among the nobility, enormous care is taken over personal adornment, and also in the quality of the utensils used,” Chou said.