Once upon a time… (Part 1:"Joe's history")

Once upon a time, a long time ago.  No, a really, really, really long time ago…

Buried Pots from the Zhou Dynasty

This is going to need to be a theme that I return to over and over again, because each time we visit a site my sense  of history is pushed, pulled and elongated.  And then we then go to another one that is even earlier.

Shaanxi History Museum

Dave and I went to the Shaanxi Province History Museum today, and it was really worth it.  First, it was raining, so a museum is absolutely the place to be when autumnal storms sweep across the Shaanxi plains.  But it was also really helpful because it wasn’t monstrously huge, like the Met or any other city museum, but it devoted a room to each major dynasty that effected Xi’an, which allowed me to start to put the pieces of the long history together.  The first room was dedicated to the Zhou dynasty and before.  We actually knew about this time period, because, when we were on our little excursion to Biaoji during National Holiday, we stopped at a small regional history dedicated to the time period.  The Shaanxi museum helped me put it into context.

Bronze Museum in Biaoji

So, let’s call our history lesson today Zhou’s History (pronounced “Joe’s History.”)

The Zhou dynasty in the Lonely Planet gets one short statement:

“Sometime between 1050 and 1045 BC, a neighboring group known as the Zhou conquered Shaanxi.  The Zhou was one of many states competing for power in the next few hundred years, but developments during this period created some the key sources of Chinese culture that would last till the present day.  A constant theme of the first millennium BC was conflict, particularly the periods known as “Spring and Autumn” (722-481 BC) and “Warring States” (475-221)

Well, kids, let me tell you right now.  Joe’s history is way more than that!

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So, what did we learn today? 

Pre-Zhou pots

First we learned that human-like beings have been wandering around the Shaanxi plains for over 100,000 years.  There was a very active Neolithic presence.  They made pots, earthen embankments, and yes, spears and arrows out of flint.  In other words, conflict was clearly a way of life, and didn’t just start at 1000 BC.  

Very cool Pre-Zhou pot

These potters grouped and regrouped.  Formed communities that fell apart.  Finally, at about 1000 BC, the Zhou’s began consolidating power.  

And the wandering potters got it together and started unifying into a civilization.  Although Confucius will come much later  (551 BC), the Zhous started talking about what  an ethical government is,  and what people owe the State and the State owes their people. 

Laborious task of making bronze pots

 Five hundred years later, Confucius codified these thoughts.  One of the signs in the museum says , in a somewhat convoluted way:  “Just as what Confucius highly complimented:  “How complete and elegant are the Zhou regulations.  I’ll follow them.”  On another sign:   “The Western Zhou Dynasty formulated and normalized norms and statues of politics, morality and society which has positively impacted on the development of Chinese society and has been appreciated and advocated by later generations.”  While it probably should be pointed out that norms are always normalized, and the writer of this sign was probably talking about statutes and not statues, nevertheless the importance of the dynasty is that, despite the constant wars, they managed to write down and formalize the responsibilities of everyone in society.  Emperors, merchants, nobles – each has a responsibility to the community to ensure that society works. 

When you look at the pots and creatures crafted from the time, the first thing that hits you is the creativity and decoration.  These aren’t subsistence pots.  No.  These are decorative.  The people who made them wanted to create something not just useful, but also beautiful.    Bronze was the dominant material of the time.  Bronze is an alloy of copper.  Thus, each of the artifacts, is marked by a mysterious greenish haze, reminiscent of verdant moss or the angry sea.  Dave and I both thought that the decorations reminded us of art seen by the Native Americans in the Pacific North West.

Walls around the courtyard homes

Stately Zhou Emperor

Similarly, the houses of the time were beautiful.  For the rich, they were large.  The compounds were walled.  And the model depicting the first emperor showed someone stately,  and who seems powerful. 

Courtyard home

When I dig back into my meager memory of world history (OK, so maybe I did check the internet!), I found that 1000 BC was the time of David in Israel, and the time of Homer in Greece. 700 BC was when Rome was just founded, and the Greeks held their first Olympics.   660 BC Byzantium was founded. And at the same time, these beautiful little green artifacts were being cast, used, and then discarded on the plains of Shaanxi.   

3000 years later, during urban renewal projects of the 1970s and 80s, large stashes of them were found in cavernous holes -- piled up and perfect in their sage green wisdom.  I can’t help but recall Keats’s lines: “Sylvan historian, who can thus express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme.”  These are, indeed tiny historians telling a beautiful tale much lovelier than this post.