Hong Kong Palace Museum | Bank of China (Hong Kong) Presents: The Origins of Chinese Civilisation

Jades and dragons are two key elements of Chinese civilisation. This jade dragon belongs to the Hongshan culture, one of the important cultures of the formative stage of the Chinese civilisation, whose sites distributed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Liaoning Province. A large number of jades have been unearthed there: jade dragons are the most representative finds. This C-shaped jade dragon with a long snout and a mane can be regarded as the original image of a Chinese dragon.

With the formation of civilisation, material and spiritual life flourished, and the king and the state appeared. The Liangzhu culture is representative of the early regional states. Its people had a specific admiration for jade. Jade cong-tubes were a status symbol for kings and nobles, and the earliest ones discovered so far were uncovered at Liangzhu. The use of cong-tubes diverged in different cultures, which also shows the unity-in-diversity pattern of the Chinese civilisation.

This drum has a round body with four sound holes at the bottom and a cylindrical neck with pegs around the rim to secure a skin membrane over the opening. The surface is decorated with appliqué and cord patterns. Drums like this, which could reach 80 centimetres in height, have been unearthed only in large-scale tombs of the early Taosi culture, where they are often found together with stone chimes and another type of drum with a tapering body. They are believed to have served as ritual objects and status symbols. Archaeologists have retrieved a stone chime and a drum like the present one in northern Shaanxi Province where there are Shimao sites, suggesting a connection between the people of the Taosi and the Shimao cultures.

The stone city at Shimao is richly decorated. The pavement and walls of the grand platform, the Huangchengtai, are carved with low reliefs, such as human and animal faces. Some scholars suggest that the carved stones were removed from other buildings and that some of the motifs are similar to those of the post-Shijiahe and Erlitou cultures. In any case, the meanings of the motifs remain unknown. The stone city at Shimao reflects the capability of rulers to mobilise the population, and the decoration of the complex reflects the ideology of the people. Mobilisation and a spiritual life are both features of the formative stage of Chinese civilisation.

During the development stage of Chinese civilisation, bronze metallurgy underwent significant change, marking the beginning of the Chinese Bronze Age. This jia-vessel, which was used to warm alcoholic beverages, was made with a complex, piece-mould casting technique. As with other bronze ritual vessels being produced for and being used exclusively by the elite, it reflects the development of a complex society with classes and division of labour, as well as the formation of a ritual using bronze vessels that was to be further developed and practiced in the Shang and Zhou dynasties.