A Journey into China's Antiquity, Volumes 1-4 (review)

This hefty, four-volume set is a pictorial history documenting representative works of art belonging to the permanent collection of the National Museum of Chinese History (Zhongguo Lishi Bowuguan) in Beijing, founded after the fall of China's last dynasty in 1912 and established as a permanent institution in 1959. This heroic publication is organized chronologically—as are the exhibition halls in Beijing—and thus in one sense may be viewed as the long-awaited multivolume catalog of the Museum's collection. The perspective of the publication, as with the galleries, is historical and factual, yet ideologically Marxist, as formulated and refined under the editorial leadership of archaeologist and professor Yu Weichao, director and curator of the Museum from 1985 to 1998.

In a visual narrative, Chinese "antiquity" is traced from its origins in the Paleolithic period (1.7 million years ago) through the demise of the last dynasty, the Qing, in 1911. Volume 1 encompasses the Paleolithic, Lower Neolithic, and Upper Neolithic periods; the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou dynasties; and the Spring and Autumn period. Volume 2 covers the Warring States period, the Qin and Han dynasties, the Three Kingdoms through the Western and Eastern Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Volume 3 covers the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Five Dynasties, the Ten Kingdoms, and the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, and volume 4 the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Each volume is approximately three hundred pages long, and each includes some three hundred color photographs of artifacts, all of excellent quality, in addition to informative maps, technical drawings, and chronological or related charts. Each of the chapters consists of a brief introductory paragraph followed by numbered photographs of art works or artifacts accompanied by an explanation that describes the significance of the subject. Thus, for the first chapter on the "Palaeolithic Age" there is an initial introductory paragraph followed by introductory remarks for each subchapter, including in this case "Evolution and Geographical Distribution of Man in Remote Antiquity," "Life of Homo Erectus," and "Life of Homo Sapiens." Illustrations of representative objects in each subchapter, such as photograph no. 1 of the upper and medial incisors of Yuanmou man from Shanxi, are followed by lengthy explanatory notes. The reader learns, for example, that these incisors belong to the "earliest upright-walking creature so far discovered in China" (p. 3).

For the last chapter in volume 4 on the "Qing Dynasty"—the "final feudal dynasty in China" (p. 147)—the organization is similar but the content far longer, with more numerous subsections and historically relevant photographs, which, in the latter case, total approximately 150 (nos. 148-294). For chapters on the Qing and all other earlier dynasties and periods, the content is balanced by internal subchapters on historical, social, economic, scientific, cultural, or artistic issues. The Qing is divided, for example, into six subchapters that encompass history ("National Unification"), society ("Social Life of Various Ethnic Minorities"), economy ("Economy of Early Qing" and "Economic and Cultural Exchange between China and Other Countries in the Early Qing"), science and culture ("Science and Culture"), and another, final, section on history ("Decline and Downfall of the Qing Dynasty").

The strengths of this publication are that it is extremely rich in content and that it is an authoritative introduction to the subject from both a factual and a visual standpoint. The quality of the photography is high and the layout exquisitely beautiful. For example, the ritual jade congobjects, axe and awl-shaped ornaments from...