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发帖数: 217 | 1 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2015309,00.html
The Forbidden City's Last Secrets Head to the U.S.
By Austin Ramzy / Beijing Saturday, Sep. 04, 2010
"Now we can go into the wild," says Nancy Berliner as we step into a garden
overgrown with waist-high weeds in the center of Beijing. This is no
abandoned lot, but a largely untouched corner of the Chinese capital's famed
Forbidden City. Nearby, hordes of tourists plod across the vast imperial
plazas. But in the garden, the only swarms are mosquitoes. Amid the 20-ft.
high rockeries, groves of bamboo grow virtually unchecked, and a wild
wolfberry plant with ripening fruit stands in the middle of our narrow
pathway.
The Forbidden City takes its English name from the fact that in imperial
times it was truly off-limits: no one could enter and leave except with
official permission. The 1911 revolution changed all that, and the Palace
Museum, which was established in 1925, now sees more than 8 million visitors
every year. But due to the Forbidden City's massive size — its 179 acres
house 980 buildings — some of it remains closed to the public.
Those still-forbidden parts of the Forbidden City include much of the
Qianlong Garden, built in the late 18th century as part of a retirement
complex for the powerful and long-ruling Qianlong Emperor. While 27
structures have been maintained in the garden's exteriors, their interiors
have been left largely untouched for most of the past century. Now, this "
jewel of the Forbidden City," as Jin Hongkui, the Palace Museum's deputy
curator calls it, is slowly being refurbished through a collaboration
between the museum and the World Monuments Fund. And as part of that project
, 90 recently restored objects from the garden will travel to the U.S. this
fall for shows at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Many of the 18th century objects that will be displayed are symbols of the
Emperor's devout Buddhism. They include a hanging panel filled with niches
that hold intricate figurines of Buddhas, deities and historical teachers
from the Tibetan Buddhist sect to which Qianlong belonged. There is an
elegant lacquered screen covered with images of luohan, enlightened
disciples of the Buddha depicted with exaggerated facial features, and a
fascinating two-ft.-tall cloisonné mandala, used as a visual aid in
meditation.
While treasures from the Forbidden City have traveled to U.S. before, this
show is unique in that the objects have only been seen by a handful of
officials, museum staff and other experts since the last Emperor left the
Forbidden City in 1924. "They've neither been displayed in China or abroad.
They've never been seen before," says Berliner, curator of Chinese art at
the Peabody Essex Museum. "They're also from a part of the Forbidden City
that's so different from the rest of the Forbidden City. These objects were
made for a context that's about being contemplative. It's not about being
big, official, national, a victorious ruler or emperor. It's about being a
scholar and a Confucian and a Buddhist."
The U.S. tour starts at the Peabody Essex on Sept. 14. Palace Museum
officials had previously visited the Massachusetts museum and were impressed
with the Yin Yu Tang, a late Qing dynasty house that was relocated from
China's southeastern Anhui province and rebuilt on the museum grounds. That
connection eventually led to the decision to show the garden's restored
items at the Peabody Essex, though some Chinese have complained that the
objects should have first been put on display domestically. But Feng Nai'an,
assistant director of the Palace Museum, says the overseas exhibitions are
important to raising international understanding of the Forbidden City. "Our
preservation work is relatively well known within China, both because of
our own publicity and the masses of people who come here to see things with
their own eyes," he says. "We felt that we should let our foreign friends
learn more about our preservation work." The U.S. was also a natural
destination, he says, because of the successful cooperation between the
Palace Museum and the New York–based World Monuments Fund on preserving the
Qianlong Garden, which began in 2002. So far one building, the Juanqinzhai
— the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service — has been restored.
That structure includes a small living space with standing mirrors — a
novelty at the time — and a small theater where the Emperor could have
enjoyed performances. Massive murals depicting palace buildings, magpies,
cranes and a bamboo trellis with trompe l'oeil images of wisteria that
appear to hang from the ceiling were removed for cleaning and touch-ups.
Specialists restored frames that had been carved from zitan, a rare wood, to
resemble bamboo, and artisans in south China recreated fabrics and
upholstery based on original designs.
Extending such efforts to the rest of the Qianlong Garden will not be easy.
In Fuwange, the Pavilion of Achieving Hopes, which lies just to the south of
the restored Juanqinzhai, the floors are barren, the wallpaper is peeling
and one large section of wall looks to the untrained eye like it had burned
— damage that was actually caused by lacquer peeling to expose the wood
beneath. The restoration of the entire garden is expected to last until 2019
. "We don't want to rush through this," says Feng. "We want to move forward
steadily." After a century of entropy, the Qianlong Garden will have to wait
a little bit longer to see its full glory returned. |
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