Great Wall in 50 Objects Read online

  Having seen the chanfron, the awful head of the beast as it was, I yearned to gain a fuller picture of the monstrous horseman’s appearance. I found spectacular and complete sets of barder across Europe – for example, at the Royal Palace Armoury in Madrid – but they were in steel, were made for ceremonial occasions, and dated from the late Renaissance, circa sixteenth century. Component parts in iron, dating from its initial appearance 1000 years earlier, in the middle of the first millennium AD, and used by the likes of the Tuoba Xianbei horsemen, were much rarer. I found no trace of it in any of the great museums along, or on either side of, the Great Wall.

  Few segments of iron barder have survived because it was utility military equipment: if it didn’t rust, it would be reused and eventually consigned to the scrapheap. My rusty find in Seoul, at some 1500 years old, is therefore quite remarkable.

  The trail warmed up as I found a related object, and a potentially more enriching one for our Great Wall studies: a pottery figurine of a warrior saddled upon his armoured horse. It stood closely in place and time to other leads in my story: the object was displayed at the Shanhaiguan Great Wall Museum, not too far across the Yellow Sea from Seoul, and like the Mogao mural, it dated from the early sixth century of the Northern Wei.

  After the fall of the Han Dynasty in AD 221, China divided into the Three Kingdoms, experienced a brief unification under the Jin Dynasty, then fragmented into the Sixteen Kingdoms, many of which were takeovers by various nomadic groups. In the late fourth century, the Tuoba Xianbei, as herders, impoverished by deprivation of opportunities to raid a well-organised and productive Han China, exploited the chaos and rode south-west to conquer and unify many of the minnow kingdoms. They established the Northern Wei Dynasty.

  Our mounted warrior gives a face to the Touba Xianbei people, the first nomads to establish a Han-style ruling dynasty. Along with the help of other foreign faces, which we will meet in our next two objects, these three will usher us one by one into the period of chaotic division, through the stability of the reunification, and up to the millennium and a second major conquest dynasty, which marked the start of the most sustained era of nomadic rule in China’s history.

  The warrior was one of scores of similar figurines found in the tomb of Princess Ruru, who died aged thirteen back in AD 510 in Ci County, near Handan, about 400 kilometres south-west of Beijing. What looks solid and chunky is in fact hollow, light and fragile, a typical burial article. In colour, the figurine’s mottled surface looks like a cloudy grey and white sky, with traces of sunset pink, showing that it was originally once painted. It’s about the size of an old-fashioned doll, and perhaps because we know that it accompanied a young teenage princess in the afterlife, it exudes a somewhat romantic feeling of perhaps having also functioned as one of her toys in life. Over its 1500-year history it did suffer a broken hind leg, which thankfully the restoration department has repaired. I always feel dreadfully nostalgic at the sight of broken toys, for they remind us how all children move on, leaving behind what they once cherished. The Touba Xianbei moved on, not only south, but also to a major change in lifestyle.

  Two things strike me as I examine the figurine up close. It’s clear that by cladding your fast and nimble bare-fleshed steed in iron armour, you are going to handicap him considerably. This sacrifice of the horse’s natural qualities is clearly conveyed by the horse figurine’s wide stance. Its fore and hind legs are splayed for stability, which indicates the considerable weight of the full barder, estimated at more than 100 kilograms.

  DESCRIPTION: Pottery figurine of a Xianbei nomadic warrior on an armoured horse

  SIGNIFICANCE: Portrait of the first nomadic conquerors of Han Chinese territory

  ORIGIN: Tomb of Princess Ruru, Ci County, near Handan, Hebei Province, circa AD 510

  LOCATION: Shanhaiguan Great Wall Museum

  What necessitated such a burden? In the same way the machine gun took the skill out of the rifle, so the crossbow’s mechanics helped level the balance of firepower on the battlefield for the less skilful. Crossbows from the Han Dynasty onward gave warriors greater range, if not accuracy. Meanwhile, in the Three Kingdoms Period of the late third century, the renowned strategist Zhuge Liang invented an automatically reloading crossbow that was particularly favoured in relatively close combat, as it could spray fifteen bolts in quick succession at the enemy. The increased likelihood of horses being hit made barder mandatory.

  My second observation is that while the figurine’s artistic styling is Buddhist, the subject is military. This creates the rather odd contrast of a serene, compassionate-looking rider mounted upon a heavily armoured horse. To me, this arrangement shows the very different two-stage journey of the people who made it, and whom it depicts.

  Another ‘first’ achievement of the Tuoba Xianbei was their adoption of Han ways. Their seizure of territory in the late fourth century forced many Hans to flee, fearing being ruled by ‘barbarians’. It was a victory tainted by a loss of the Han’s productive force. After initially developing a hybrid Tuoba–Han regime, the Xiaowen Emperor (who reigned between 471 and 499) accelerated his dynasty’s Sinicisation by personal example. He abandoned his own family clan name, Tuoba, and replaced it with a Han name – and he required all others to do the same. Chinese language and dress were adopted, intermarriage with Hans was encouraged, and shamanism renounced.

  As our warrior’s serene expression indicates, the Northern Wei embraced Chinese Buddhism; the belief ’s distinctive architectures, sculptures and fine arts transformed the territory. Tall pagodas were constructed to mark temples, and giant statues cut into cliff faces. Underground, too, from the single tomb of a princess in the east to the Cave of Ten Thousand Buddhas in the west, colourful, lifelike art and sacred texts shed light on an aspect of the human experience that previously had been a mysterious step into darkness. Through its tenet of rebirth, Buddhism provided an explanation for death, a concern neglected by the indigenous Han philosophies of Confucianism and Daoism.

  For us, however, the most significant and surprising landmark left by the Tuoba Xianbeis on their journey to becoming Chinese was their use – largely through recycling – of an extant Great Wall defence in the north. This had been built centuries earlier, during the Han Dynasty, but part of it was now revamped to fend off assaults from the new occupants of the steppe region, the Rouran and the Tujue.

  In its smile, stance and style, this figurine shows us how the Tuoba Xianbei became the Northern Wei. His story tells us that while wars were won with valour, weapons and barder, the Tuoba Xianbei made peace and prosperity by adopting Chinese ways. In doing so, they not only changed their own identity but also gave new meaning to ‘Chinese-ness’. Originally, it was defined as a Han story, but now it was redefined as diverse.

  To me, the serene smile of the warrior on the iron-clad horse says: ‘First we beat them, and then we joined them.’

  19.

  The Gap Years

  Tri-coloured glaze figurine of a camel

  What’s the longest gap in the Great Wall? This question might see you reaching for a map of China, locating the Wall and proceeding along its battlement symbol to find and then estimate the length of its gaps. You might ponder: ‘Was the Wall there originally? And if it was, what happened to it?’

  My question is deliberately ambiguous: it doesn’t refer to spatial gaps in any of the walls’ geography, but temporal gaps in its trans-dynastic construction. The Great Wall has been under construction in for most of its existence, with only a few relatively short breaks – after the Western Han during the Three Kingdoms Period, for example, and now.

  As the seventh century dawns, we are poised on the edge of the longest chronological gap in Great Wall construction. The Tang (AD 618–907) was China’s longest-lasting dynasty (291 years), outliving other lengthy rules such as the Western Han (190 years) and the Ming (276 years). But unlike these blood-brother ethnic Han dynasties, whose rule pervaded ‘all China’, the Tang never built a Great Wa
ll of its own.

  (I should note that the Tang did build a long wall of sorts, but it was a rather feeble effort, compared to its much lengthier relatives. As it was less than 100 kilometres in length, I include it in the ‘disputed’ group of structures that do not possess the basic requirement of a Great Wall: extraordinary length.)

  DESCRIPTION: Tri-Coloured glazed pottery figurine of a group of musicians on a camel.

  SIGNIFICANCE: Insight on Tang China’s control of the lucrative ‘Silk Road’ trade route.

  ORIGIN: Xi’an, Shaanxi Province

  LOCATION: Ancient China Exhibition, National Museum of China, Beijing.

  Why include in this book an object from a dynasty that built no part of the Great Wall? I believe that the reason for this long pause in Wall-building is integral to the overall Wall story. In order to understand ‘the Wall’, you need to understand something much broader: the relationship between the Chinese and their northern nomadic neighbours. Just as questions arise over the reasons for spatial gaps in today’s Wall, very intriguing questions arise when we try to understand why there was no Tang Dynasty Great Wall worth mentioning. What alternative strategies or policies did the Tang use to defend their frontiers?

  I began my quest in literature. Li Bai (AD 701–762) refers to the ‘Great Wall’ in his epic poem ‘Fighting South of the Rampart’:

  Last year we were fighting at the source of the Sangkan;

  This year we are fighting on the Onion road.

  We have washed our swords in the surf of Parthian Seas;

  We have pastured our horses among the snows of the Tian Mountains.

  The King’s armies have grown grey and old

  Fighting ten thousand leagues away from home.

  The Huns have no trade by battle and carnage;

  They have no fields or ploughlands,

  But only wastes where white bones lie among yellow sands.

  Where the House of Qin built the Great Wall that was to keep away the Tartars,

  There, in its turn, the House of Han lit beacons of war.

  The beacons are always alight, fighting and marching never stop.

  Men die in the field, slashing sword to sword;

  The horses of the conquered neigh piteously to Heaven.

  Crows and hawks peck for human guts,

  Carry them in their beaks and hang them on the branches of withered trees.

  Captains and soldiers are smeared on the bushes and grass;

  The general schemed in vain.

  Know therefore that the sword is a cursed thing

  Which the wise man brandishes only if he must.

  Poetry is a language of its own, but to me this poem speaks of geography, mentioning a handful of places, some of which I know, some I don’t. It refers to great distances stretching to a new frontier, where the old business of battle is fought, now as it was before. It speaks of territorial expansion, and questions the purpose of it.

  The poem prompted me to reach for an historical atlas of China and Central Asia, so I could see the extent of the Tang Empire. In outline it looked like a large bone, with bulbous knuckles in the north-west and south-east, linked by a thinner segment of land. The eastern mass was the heartland of China, centred on the Yellow River, while the other mass was referred to as the ‘Western Regions’. Between the two ran the Hexi Corridor.

  The map summarised, and simplified, a very complex historical period, and poignantly emphasised a trade link of paramount economic importance. Unprecedented prosperity was enjoyed in the heartland of Tang China, so glittering that it was dubbed the ‘Golden Age’. A plethora of visual arts from the period evidence the good life of the Tangs. The object I have chosen does exactly that.

  This large, bright, joyful figurine shows us a band of foreign musicians – we might even assume them to be expats from the Western Regions who are working abroad, part of a permanent foreign community of around 5000 residing in the imperial capital of Chang’an, populated by 1 million inhabitants. Created in stunning tricoloured glazed pottery, the piece depicts the symbiotic relationship that existed between powerful and populous Tang China, home to four of the world’s five largest cities, and its Silk Road neighbours. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, oiled by lucrative exchanges of goods. This kept the merchant class happy, while taxation poured into government coffers, funding huge military offensives and shrewd political frontier campaigns.

  The fruits of this ‘soft power’ from the Silk Road helped foot the bill of the hard power drives in other directions. Specifically, we are talking about the land north of China’s heartland: the steppe. Well off the main transcontinental trade route, successive groups of northern nomads were ostracised, their access to the Silk Road trade route blocked by the Chinese masters of its eastern end. Between the sixth and eighth centuries, the Tujue Empire stretched across this vast region, which was targeted and subjugated by a very well financed Tang military. The Silk Road economic boom paid for these wars of aggression, and others.

  In comparing the new Tang approach to the more conventional one of a Wall built and operated by the preceding Sui Dynasty, Emperor Tang Taizong (AD 626–649) congratulated one of his generals who had won victories against the Turks by saying, ‘You are a better Great Wall than the ramparts built by Sui Yangdi.’ The Emperor went on to rule for two decades which became known as ‘the Zhenguan Era of good government’, laying the foundations for the Tang’s Golden Era, the prelude to three long centuries of solidarity, unitary rule, prosperity and expansion.

  20.

  Millennium Man

  Silver funerary mask of a Qidan nobleman

  Six billion people recently experienced the pivotal point in timekeeping which we dubbed ‘the millennium’, while ‘only’ an estimated 265 million experienced the one before, in AD 1000 – still a huge number of people. Of them, few can show us their true faces. This funerary mask personifies one of them, a man of very great distinction. It’s the visage of a Qidan tribesman, a nobleman, who witnessed the millennium before last. For me, seeking out the transformative episodes of the Great Wall’s tortuous story, he was in the right place at just the right time.

  The Qidans built one of the most mysterious of all the Great Walls. The Liao Wall, which remains as a parallel trench-mound structure, streaks across hundreds of kilometres of Mongolia’s Eastern Steppe. Along its course, I found nothing that might reveal the personality of these people, apart from a few pottery sherds. Then I met this Qidan nobleman of the millennium in one of Ulaanbaatar’s most remarkable museums. His funerary mask illuminates the changing world of the Liao, nomadic tribesmen turned empire builders.

  First, a post-mortem. This Qidan lived between around AD 980 and 1030, and was buried on Mongolia’s Eastern Steppe. As far as a funeral went, you got what your family could afford. His were nobles, so they commissioned a silver mask.

  DESCRIPTION: Beaten and chased silver funerary mask of a Qidan nobleman

  SIGNIFICANCE: Portrait of a Qidan, the founders of the Liao Dynasty (AD 906–1125), first builders of ‘alien regime’ Great Wall

  ORIGIN: Eastern Mongolia, circa early eleventh century

  LOCATION: Museum of the Great Hunnu Empire, Erdene, east of Ulaanbaatar

  A mould was made of the man’s face; it was then inverted and covered by a large, thin metal sheet, perhaps heated to render it malleable. A metalsmith used a hammer to shape it. Like a crude three-dimensional rubbing, the sheet assumed the size, shape and features of the deceased man’s face.

  One thousand years later we can recognise this Qidan’s long, thin visage, his hollow cheeks, his small puckered mouth, which is rimmed by a sparse moustache and a scraggly beard, his large, high nose, and his small, squinting eyes, which are set deep in their sockets.

  Undoubtedly the most famous funerary mask of antiquity is that of Egypt’s King Tutankhamun (1341–1321 BC), discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter. It is unique. This Qidan funerary mask is one of a genre, and they have
been found in gold, silver and bronze inside tombs scattered across a swathe of today’s north and north-east China and Eastern Mongolia – the former empire of the Liao. Many have been smuggled worldwide, where even silver masks are expected to fetch more than US$100 000 at auction. This one was saved from such a fate by the Mongolian antiquary Purevjav Eredenechuluun, who in 2011, just a few months before he passed away, told me of his patriotic quest: to save Mongolia’s cultural heritage from disappearing overseas. He had been working to acquire antiquities to put them on display for the Mongolian people.

  Our millennium man lived during the Liao Dynasty, a critical point in our Great Wall journey – its midpoint, in fact. His people, the Qidans, nomads turned pastoralists, ‘reintroduced’ Wall-building proper after the 300-year lapse during the Tang. Their establishment of the Liao heralded the start of a series of unprecedented events in the Great Wall theatre of war, for China and the region’s geopolitics as a whole. Over 470 years, the whole region progressively fell to the sustained advances of northerners. One after another they came: first the Qidans, then the Jurchens, and after them the Mongols.

  This funerary mask gives a face to those who set in motion what we could call the era of northern rule. From the fourth century, the Qidans had been rooted to the grasslands, but they took advantage of the permeable border policies favoured during the Tang, and when it collapsed they made their move from steppe to plain. They steadily increased their domain, eventually reaching the edge of the North China Plain, where they chose to build one of their capitals, which they named Yanjing. Geographically, that lies under today’s modern Beijing; thus, the Qidans became the first ‘Beijingers’. Their empire stretched from the Siberian and Manchurian forests in the north and east, through the steppe and Gobi Desert at the centre, to the North China Plain in the south; over such territory, a major challenge for the Qidans was to rule a multi-ethnic population. They set up two systems of government: the northern division contained mainly Qidan nomadic and pastoral herders living in gers, while the southern division comprised crop cultivators, mainly ethnic Han, living in sedentary abodes.