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1. Antique snuff bottles in Forbidden City by S. Liu & Dave Berlin, March 2010
2. The Dao De Ching by Dave Berlin, March 2010
3. Buddha head made of elephant bone in East Han dynasty by Xuepeng Liu & Dave Berlin, Feb. 2010
4. Visit to a cloisonne workshop in suburb Beijing by S. Liu, Jan. 2010
5. Growing up in Beijing, by S. Liu, July 5th, 2009
6. In search of mineral crystals in western China, by Xuepeng Liu, May, 2009
1. Antique snuff bottles in Forbidden City by S. Liu & Dave Berlin, March 2010
Snuff bottles were used in China after tobacco came to Beijing in the 16th century. A snuff or medicinal bottle is a small bottle, usually carved out of lapis lazuli, jade, agate, crystal or made out of painted glass, used to carry one's personal supply of snuff. In 16th century China, tobacco was believed to have medicinal properties--it was considered to be good for colds, grippes, and disorders of the digestive and nervous system. It was also used to increase sexual potency.
Snuff became a part of Chinese high society, and business deals were often sealed with a pinch of it, much the same way businessmen today will take shots of aquavit to seal a deal. It was offered to guests when they entered your home, and when you met friends on the streets. To offer a pinch of snuff was to accept another person as a friend, to show bonhomie, and to improve feelings of general companionship. It was the hail-fellow-well-met of its era.
Snuff bottles could be very basic, but they also could be stunning to look at. The best glass snuff bottles had a kind of tactile feeling to them, a smoothness--the material almost felt soft and satiny. In addition to snuff bottles made from precious stones, China also produced the famous inside painted snuff bottles --where the artist has carefully inserted a very tiny, delicate brush into the neck of the bottle and painted the inside. This work is painstaking, exacting --it requires a tremendous amount of patience and dedication. Often, the crafters of modern snuff bottles will wear a loupe over their eyes to see their work.
The forbidden city has an excellent collection of Qing snuff bottles that belonged to members of the imperial families. These snuff bottles are of the best quality -- made of precious materials, designed by highly acclaimed artists and carved or painted by the most skilled artisans. Some of these snuff bottles are available to the public in forbidden city's treasure exhibit. Below are pictures taken from this exhibit.
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In the photos above, the bottles are made of crystal, amethyst, gum copal and amber. Collection of Palace Museum, Beijing, China.
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In the photos above, the bottles are made of tourmaline, lapiz lazuli, malachite, coral and agate. Collection of Palace Museum, Beijing, China.
The Palace Museum has an excellent website with descriptions of its treasure collections. Click here to read more, Official Palace Museum's snuff bottle collection and other palace paraphernalia.
Below is an antique inside painted snuff bottle from the collection of Beijing Capital Museum. It's not as lavish as those ones belonged to the imperial families but it's more artistic. It was a companion bottle to a Qing dynasty scholar in the 1700s.
2. The Dao De Ching by Dave Berlin, March 2010
The Dao De Ching is reputed to be the teachings of a man named "Lao Tse". It was first written down by someone purporting to be him about two hundred years after he allegedly lived, in 300 BC or thereabouts.
The Dao De Ching is the teaching of a path, or a "way" that requires that people live in harmony with the natural order of the universe. Lao Tse, a librarian in the court of the Emperor, developed the idea of "wu wei" or "do not do". Lao Tse believed that the Universe had a certain order, and to take direct action invariably ran someone up against the order of the Universe.
A good way to Westernize this concept is to say that Lao Tse believed that the Universe "wanted" something and the best thing to do was go along with it. In modern American terms, minus the multileveled and layered subtexts rendered in the original classical Chinese of the written Dao texts, we say that "God is trying to tell me something..." or "I guess it wasn't meant to be." Lao Tse believed that the thing for people to do was to learn experimentally what was meant to be or what the Universe was trying to tell them, and then go in harmony with it.
The Dao De Ching is written in classical Chinese calligraphy and is difficult to translate into English--most modern Chinese do not have the necessary depth of background in the classical Chinese literature canon. Since the Dao De Ching makes a lot of allusions to this canon of literature--which any educated noble Chinese of Lao Tse's time would have known--it is hard for both modern Chinese and Westerners to translate. Also, often modern Chinese will know the modern meanings of certain characters but not the ancient meanings, which may be only distantly related or have much subtler shades of meaning.
The Dao De Ching is divided into two parts: The Dao Ching and the De Ching. The earliest known copy was written on bamboo slips and was found on an archaeological dig at Guodian, near the old Chu capital in modern day Hubei province.
You can see the photographed Guoding Laozi with translation here.
When the Guoding Laozi (the Dao De Ching was originally called the Laozi) was discovered in a tomb in 1993, it was called " ...like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls," by Tu Weiming, director of the Harvard Yenching Institute. The Guoding Laozi was discovered in what was believed to be a tomb of a tutor of a noble prince, Crown Prince Heng, who became the Chu king Qingxiang, ruling from the capital, Ying. The slips contained, among other writings, 24 chapters of the current Dao De Ching and 8 chapters that contain parts of the modern text.
Included below are two photographs of a copy of the Dao De Ching from the 12th Century, copied during the Yuan Dynasty.
This is a photo of the very beginning of the Dao Ching.
This is a photo of the end of the Dao Ching.
Notice in these two photos the red characters made by the seals of the scholars who copied and constructed the books. The seals were a kind of signature, much like an e-mail signature line today.
3. Buddha head made of elephant bone in East Han dynasty by Xuepeng Liu & Dave Berlin, Feb. 2010
Buddhism originated in India in 5th century BC. It was essentially the teachings of the Prince Siddhartha Guatama, who traveled throughout the Ganges River plain in India, spreading his ideas that a higher state of existence could be achieved by meditation, the proper ordering of one's karma, and a "Middle Way"--neither completely renouncing the world nor living in it materially to excess.
Buddhism spread East from India to China during the East Han dynasty (25-200 AD). Early on in the East Han dynasty, Buddha statues made in China imitated the style of Indian Buddhas. Statues and other works of art depicting the Buddha did not differ much between China and India.
It was not until the Wei Jin period (A.D. 220-420) that Buddha art evolved in China to reflect the characteristics specific to Chinese culture and Chinese Buddhism.
This carving was done using the technique called "Han Eight Cuts" or "Cut Eight Times".
Han Eight Cuts was a technique used in jade caring that was invented during the Han dynasty. Artists during the Han dynasty tended to emphasize an object's shape much more than its texture. They didn't worry so much about making edges and curves smooth and surfaces flat and smooth. Eight Cuts would form the main outline of a jade object with eight simple strokes of a knife. The idea is similar to sketching the outline of an object with a few lines in a graphite drawing.
Only the greatest most skilled artisans with the best training and the deepest spirit were able to carve an object with this technique. Their artwork is considered priceless and very hard to find.
This particular Buddha's head carving is in the collection of My Crystal Bridge Arts and Crafts co-founder Xuepeng Liu's. This head was carved of elephant bone--from the throat of an elephant--during the East Han dynasty. The material was a piece of bone from the throat of an elephant. It was carved more than 2000 years ago and is already fossilized. The yellowed bone has become hard and has an oily look and feel from 2000 years of human handling. The carving is vivid and is fluently done--it has a good flow to it--to reflect the deep influence Buddhism had on people's thinking at the time.
There are three smaller sitting Buddhas on the crown of the Buddha's head. These smaller Buddhas' faces were carved using the Han eight cuts technique. These eight brief carvings outlined the Buddhas' facial features. Also, since these smaller Buddhas are not the center of the object, the simple carvings pushed them to the background to leave the focal point to the actual Buddha head.
This Buddha head was something an ancient monk carried with him when traveling, it's also called a companion Buddha. The Buddha head came to East Han's territory with this ancient monk and stayed to today for us to appreciate it.
The Buddha head is about 4 inch high and weighs about 4 oz. It's located in Beijing, China.
Disclaimer: This particular antique is not available for sale. It is presented here purely for educational and informational purposes. Chinese law prohibits the sale of Chinese antiques made prior to the 1840s outside of China.
4. Visit to a cloisonne workshop in suburb Beijing, Jan. 2010
During my recent trip to Beijing, I had the chance to visit a cloisonne workshop for the first time in my life.
My brother and I drove to a suburb one hour from Beijing in Hebei province. The day was a sunny and pleasant winter day, the kind of day when the warm sun shines on you and makes you feel warm inside, even in the cold air. We arrived in town and were greeted by the manager in the town center. We followed his car to the workshop.
The manager and his staff took us around the showroom, obviously proud of what he had to sell. Afterwards, we got a special treat - a tour of the workshop itself. I was so exicted. I have been selling cloisonne wares for years, and I have always wondered how they are made. I was looking forward to seeing it with my own eyes. I was given permission to take pictures also.
The manager led us to a huge sun lit room with a very high ceiling. My eyes caught a pile of reddish brass sheets along the wall. These brass sheets are the basic material for the body of almost all Chinese cloisonne crafts.
The manager told us that Chinese cloisonnes were made mainly from brass or copper. He said the Japanese sometimes uses silver. He explained that the brass sheets are soldered and banged on pre-made solid metal molds to form the vase shapes. The following picture shows the workstation for soldering and shaping the metal sheets into vases.
A basket of brass bottom rims made from molds.
A workstation to fit rims onto bodies.
Finished bodies waiting for wiring in the yard.
After the vases are formed, they are wired. The wiring room was also bright with sun light and there were long, wide work benches lined up from one end of the room to the other. There were a dozen artisans (mostly females due to the huge amount of patience needed to work in this labor intensive trade) hunched over their vases, working carefully and methodically, wiring the vases. My brother and I were amazed by what we saw.
At the far end, one of the women was transferring a design from a picture painted on a piece of paper to the brass body with black ink. On our side of the bench, another worker was gluing brass wires along the design lines to form cells. These cells are the "cloisonne" - "cells" in French. The multicolored enamel pastes are laid into the cells and then the entire vase or trinket box or what have you is fired in a kiln, baking the enamel on. This process is repeated two or three times until the enamel is thick and hard.
Brass stripes. They are actually 6 stripes stacked together. These stripes are shaped to their designed curves in stacks to increase productivity.
Gluing the brass stripes onto the body. Once glued onto the body, the stripes form compartments or cells amongst themselves. These cells will be filled with enamel later on.
Completely wired bodies.
A stack of bowls with different colored enamel pastes in them. The enamel pastes are used to fill the cells (cloisonne in French) on the body.
A worker applying enamels into the cells.
Once the enamels are applied, the vases are ready for firing. The firing temperature is about 2000 degrees Celsius. The enamels melt at this temperature and fuse onto the brass body and compartment walls. A total of three firings are required for each object. Below is a picture of the firing kiln.
After each firing, the enamels shrink so more applications are needed. Below is a picture of some vases after the first firing.
After three firings, the cloisonne wares are polished on a rotating shaft with soft sandy stones. A fully polished cloisonne vase has a very smooth and shiny surface. Once polished, the vases are usually gilded with gold to make the divisions between colors stand out. Below is a picture of a pile of finished vases.
The tour took about half an hour. My brother and I had tea and thanked our hosts for their hospitality. Also we told them our intentions to possibly buy from them in the future. Now I just need to come up with some custom designs for our products. I have a few good ideas...
5. Growing up in Beijing
Growing up in Beijing is like growing up in NYC - you are part of something grand but you are not, unless you are the heir of well heeled bankers.
I and my brother was born to a lower middle class family in the 1970s. My childhood was mostly simple and happy. I enjoyed the few toys
my parents were able to buy and the companies of similar aged kids living in the same narrow alley.
Since ever in my childhood, I was told all kinds of stories about old royal families who started to live
in Beijing since the Yuan dynasty in the 1400s. These emperors and empresses made Beijing grand and made the Beijing people grand by living
under their feet.
School for children in China is tough because there is tremendous competition - the population is huge - and education is the only way for most people to live a decent life as an adult. School was particularly difficult for me and my brother because my mother was an elementary school teacher. I had a lot of homework to do after school and on weekends. I always felt that I had to work twice as hard as everyone else to get a little bit ahead.
But there are advantages to having the teacher live in your home, and one of them is that if it's midnight and you don't understand something you are studying,
you can ask her. Thanks to my mom, I was able to stay top ranked in my classes all the way to college.
In between midterms and final terms, I spent most of my free time wandering up and down the city to explore the many museums and historical exhibits such as the natural science museum, the forbidden city, the summer palace, the North Sea Park, the Great Wall and Temple of Heaven. I have seen photographs of the Great Wall taken from space and it always amazed me that men had built it, men with two hands and two legs and a human spirit - and yet you could see it from space. I always thought about what mankind could do if he really decided he wanted to do it, if he had the will to do it, one brick at a time.
I also spent whole days in the Forbidden City wandering around until the guards chased me out. I would stand only a few feet away from artifacts that were thousands of years old, created by the advanced ancient civilizations that were my forebears and my linesmen. These treasures were made of cloisonne, jade, gold, brass or wood. I wondered often how on earth those ancient craftsmen could create such miracles without any precision tools, in awe of the patience of these artists, the care they took in the act of creation, and the ecstasy they felt that must have been so strong that they were willing to work their entire lives just to get it. I thought a lot about the emperors and empresses who lived their charmed lives by squeezing the last drop of blood out of the people they ruled.
My favorite place to hang out in Beijing was the banks along the moat surrounding the four walls of the forbidden city. In springtime, I would spend many afternoons sitting on the
cool stone steps leading to the water, looking at the watchtowers where the walls joined. I would think about how many people lived and died inside these walls, never thinking about
what lay outside, their lives and existences lived in the same places, year after year, day after day.. These people's lives were granted by the emperors and could be taken away at
the whim of the emperors. The emperors grew great and strong because of this intense power, this absolute authority. They worried about nothing, and they had time to enjoy the great
artworks their subjects created for them.
The Chinese feudal society finally came to an end through decade long revolution in 1911. The royal family was eventually driven out of forbidden city. Even though the emperors are
long gone, the grandness they built in Beijing lingers in the air. If you walk in Beijing today, you can still feel the care free atmosphere demonstrated by people walking their birds
in the morning, playing chess on a stone table in the park or casually chatting in the middle of the street. Beijingers are never in a rush. We feel that the hustle and bustle of life
can wait. We savor every second and enjoy the here and now.
Sometimes, when I was working in NYC, I'd walk in Central Park on a Saturday morning. The food vendors selling hot dogs, the portrait artist busy drawing or hustling to get $20 commissions, the young kids playing in the fountain and the guy running along aside his dog reminds me so much of Beijing, of Beijing's grandness, which draws me back every year.
6. In search of mineral crystals in western China
By Xuepeng Liu, May 2009
It was a warm early summer in Beijing when my friend Lee and I decided to start our journey to western China's Shanxi province to search and stock up on mineral crystals. Western China is crisscrossed with high mountain ranges. The most well known of these is the Himalayas, but there are many. Beryl and rock crystals grow in abundance in the mountain caves of Western China - they are usually found in the caverns above 4200 meters (around fifteen thousand feet, or just under half the height of Mount Everest). We are determined to reach the source of these crystals.
We hopped in our 10 year old Cherokee jeep and started our 2000 mile journey across China. After 3 days of rutted, flooded roads, detours, washed out bridges, and lungfuls of air thickened by black coal dust, we finally crossed the province border. People walking along the side of the road look at us curiously, and breathing gets harder as the air gets thinner. I get an odd feeling of jamais vu-a sense that I have never been here before, although I know I have. The effect is disquieting, and it plays on my nerves, making me edgy and a little snappish.
We reached the base camp at Bao Ding mountain. We are about 9000 feet above sea level and the dusk is falling - the lowlight is coming. We set up camp among five or six other tents
already pitched. We locate a depression in the rocks. The rocks look secure and the ditch will serve to break some of the bitter, frigid wind. It took the two of us four
hours to set up our single tent, but now we will have a temporary home. We'll be spending the next week in these mountains.
The next morning when we wake up, our tent is all covered in snow. I am freezing from inside out - the cold rips through me, cutting and burning. I wait eagerly for the coming
of the sun.
We wolf down breakfast, pack our supplies and follow behind our guide who knows where the caves are. The guide is a local guy in his thirties. His skin is thick and brown
from the weather and sun. His arms are knotted like tree trunks of solid muscle - his forearms are as hard as rocks and as big around as my calves. He speaks almost not at all
but knows the mountains well enough to navigate them in his sleep. The air is getting thinner and our guide has to wait for us from time to time. After three hours of solid climbing,
our guide finally said, "We are here, you can see the caves up there."
We are in a low and narrow cave formed by rock movements that created fissures in the earth. The cracks are big enough for people to walk in. Underneath the earth and rocks, where
the temperature and pressure is high enough, the crystals will form. Later rock movements bring these crystals to the surface where curious people like us came into the caves and
discovered them.
Once inside the cave, we turn on our flashlights and start looking for crystals. They are not in the obvious opens. We have to look hard, behind and under other rocks. The cave is deep and dark. I can hear the fragile, thunderous echo of my own breathing. Thanks to our guide's experience, we find our first beryl crystal specimen underneath another rock. It takes quite some effort to break it off the rock bed. I can't see clearly what it looks like under the dim flash light. We keep searching and find two more.
Finally we get out of the cave, I hold the crystals in my own hands. My heart races like the heart of a rabbit when I lay my eyes on them. These beryl crystals look raw and natural. The crystals are clear like the water from a spring. The afternoon sunshine shoots through them and refracts along the edges. I look deep inside the crystals; it seems like it contains all of the colors in a rainbow, and some, I almost think, from outside of one.
We kept going back to the caves for the next week and collected more crystals. Our guide told us that there was a town called PingXiang at the foot of
mountains. People in the town mine these crystals and we should find more there.
We left the base camp a week later and came into PingXiang town. There are a lot merchants selling these crystals in the markets. We bought enough to load our Jeep with them, so many that the extra weight provided good traction for the car on the journey home It's much easier this way to stock up but the experience of discovering them ourselves is priceless. I promise myself that I will soon be back to Ping Xiang - and that someday, I will return to the dark caves in the mountains.