Charms of Hangzhou in Southern Song Dynasty on Display

The morning of October 28, 2009 witnessed the opening of the Southern Song Dynasty Week in Hangzhou and the Exhibition of Culture of the Ancient Capital of the Southern Song Dynasty in Hangzhou History Museum.

The two events were sponsored by the administration of the West Lake Historical and Scenic Zone and produced by Hangzhou History Museum. The two events aimed to represent the ancient charms of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) and the culture of the imperial capital. The two events were also part of the city’s endeavor to create the planned display at Southern Song Dynasty Museum.

In the context of the 8,000-year-old civilization in the area where Hangzhou and its suburban counties spread and in the 5,000-year history of Hangzhou as a city, Hangzhou came of age as the capital of the Wuyue Kingdom (907-978) and bloomed and flourished when it became the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty.

These years witnessed how a capital of a small kingdom metamorphosed into the capital of a vast dynasty. The Five Dynasties were a period of wars and chaos, but Hangzhou was kept free of the upheaval in other parts of the country and prospered peacefully. In the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), this part was well known as the richest province in the southeast of China. In 1138, the royal court of the Southern Song Dynasty finally settled down in Hangzhou after on the move in chaos for more than 10 years. Over the next 140 years, Hangzhou prospered. Marco Polo came to the city after the Yuan Dynasty replaced the Southern Song Dynasty and marveled that Hangzhou was “without doubt the finest and the most splendid city in the world.”

The exhibition at the Hangzhou History Museum featured the Southern Song Dynasty as the core part and the Wuyue Kingdom during the Five Dynasties as secondary part. The exhibition had three highlights of the past glory.

First, the city’s layout during the Southern Song Dynasty is now clarified on the basis of latest archaeological finds over the past few years. Hangzhou as the national capital was largely divided into two major parts: the royal palaces and government offices in the south and the markets in the north. The old downtown of Hangzhou has retained some ancient names and structure of the imperial capital. Archaeologists now know more about the royal palace, government departments, temples, and royal kilns. These finds, through numerous diggings and textual researches, have helped piece together a picture of the past glory. The exhibition enabled city’s residents to find out how their daily life is closely tied to the past of 800 years ago.

Second, 289 exhibits such as gold and silver jewelries, bronze and jade artifacts, royal kiln porcelains, coins and paper money, paintings and calligraphic artworks were on display to showcase the material and cultural prosperity of the city’s boom years in six aspects: business, economy and wealth, the lake area, poetry, classic studies and academic schools, and the fine art academy of the Southern Song Dynasty. Prominent poets and scholars of the Southern Song Dynasty created a brilliant wealth of artworks rarely seen in the history of China.

Third, the exhibits from seven cities and counties of Hangzhou contributed to the unprecedented width and depth of any exhibition of this kind. The exhibits unearthed in these regions indicated how these suburban regions contributed to the prosperity of the capital. Some of the exhibits made their public debut at the exhibition and they are evidence of the past glory: royal porcelains of the Wuyue Kingdom unearthed in Lin’an City, a gold utensil unearthed in Jiande City, clay figurines unearthed in Tonglu County, bronze utensils discovered in a cellar in Xiaoshan, porcelain ware unearthed in Fuyang City, a stone cutting unearthed in Chun’an, and a kiln site discovered in Yuhang District.

During the Southern Song Dynasty Week, Hangzhou History Museum, China Tea Museum, Hangzhou Tang Yun Gallery, and the Southern Song Dynasty Guan Kiln Museum held exhibitions and lectures in commemoration of Hangzhou as the capital of the dynasty.

On October 31, 2009, Hangzhou staged a similar exhibition in Luoyang City in central China’s Henan Province on its ancient glory as the national capital. Eight cities in China, which once served as the country’s capital over different periods of the past 2,000-plus years, staged their respective exhibits.

Today, Hangzhou upholds the city’s spirit of elegance, harmony, dignity and openness. This well-defined spirit truthfully mirrors the city’s culture and history and highlights its determination to carry on the past glory into future.