Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing (review)

Reviews 511 NOTE S 1. Does this mean that game birds ate hallucinogenic toads, passing the psychoactive drugs on to the humans who subsequently had pheasant for dinner? (A great deal depends, of course, on the meaning ofthe undefined neologism "biomediator.") The implied argument seems to be that perhaps the ancient Chinese entered altered states ofconsciousness by eating pheasants, and, ifso, then this might explain why the pheasant-like "phoenix" became such an important symbol in East Asian art. Yet, Paper seems inclined to reject the "biomediator" hypothesis, at least where pheasants are concerned. Does he doubt that pheasants would eat toxic toads, while cranes might? However, ifthe hypothesis is plausible in regard to the xian and their "familiars," then Paper appears to be suggesting that Daoist recluses ate cranesto get high. Perhaps I still have not figured it out. Jessica Rawson with the assistance of Carol Michaelson. Chinese Jadefrom the Neolithic to the Qing. Photography by John Williams and David Gowers. London: British Museum Publications, 1995. 463 pp. 730 illustrations (420 in color). Hardcover $115.00, isbn 0-7141-1469-3. The study of the material culture, archaeology, and art of early China is at present a field moving so fast that scholars can have the uncomfortable experience of seeing their work rendered entirely obsolete. Happily, the rate ofparadigm shift is so very rapid they may also have the opportunity within a single career to revisit and revise their earlier conclusions. This has been the case for Jessica Rawson, who in 1975 was responsible for the cataloging of the earlier pieces ofjade in a major exhibition titled Chinese Jade throughout the Ages, organized in London by the Oriental Ceramic Society. What she wrote then represented the "state ofthe art," yet much ofit might now be viewed as chiefly ofhistoriographical interest, a measure ofwhat was known before the explosion in archaeological activity within the People's Republic, which has revolutionized understanding in the past decade or so. The longevity of the present volume, now clearly the major overview of the subject in print, may depend with similar indeterminacy on what comes out of the ground in the future, although the advances in knowledge since 1975 seem secure against all but the most stunning ofexcavated revelations. This volume is the catalog ofan exhibition ofthe private collection ofa© 1996 fry University single individual, Sir Joseph Hotung, benefactor and Trustee ofthe British MuofHawai 'i Pressseum, where until recently Dr. Rawson was Keeper ofthe Department ofOriental Antiquities. As such, it is inevitably configured within the positivist framework imposed by the catalog format. What is written about is largely what is there, and 512 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 what is there is inevitably the result of processes of selection over which the author has ultimately had very little choice. Some of these processes depend on the selectivities of the art market, and the availability through unauthorized digging in China (with subsequent total loss of the original context) ofthe right sort of goods to supply it. Some depend on the taste of the individual collector. Despite the all-embracing title, the selection of objects here is heavily weighted toward the earliest periods ofjade-working in China; pieces from the Qing (1644-1911) barely make it into double figures and number among them nothing which could not be duplicated in a number of collections outside China, and easily surpassed from those within it. For the Hotung Collection is above all a collection of "archaic jades," of the kinds ofritual and decorative objects which have historically been invested with immensely prestigious, ifhardly stable, types of cultural meaning over several millennia. Here there is selectivity, too, imposed by the workings of the art market and the ravages of time. What is presented as the object of analysis is frequently, as the author scrupulously makes clear, just a bit of something: one pendant from a large assemblage of such pieces, a plaque for sewing onto clothing, or the pommel of a sword. The extent to which such fragments are satisfactory synecdoches for the totalities of which they once formed a part and the extent to which all these things make sense as a stable category...