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Mongolia's century; Revolution and reforms in a country of nomads, townspeople and outsiders
Foreword: Mongolia by Jan Locus (Cypres 2004)
Tjalling Halbertsma
In an inner court of an apartment block in the northern part of Ulaan Bataar
stands a steel statue of a balding man who has put his enormous hand into
his waistcoat. The metres high statue has been placed somewhat awkwardly against
the façade of the apartment complex to prevent it from falling over.
Bright blue silk shawls, as can be found in Buddhist monasteries, have been
tied around the steel neck, and a small can of sand with a burnt joss stick
planted in it has been placed at the feet. Thick layers of fat with matchsticks
in it have been smeared on the knees, a practice that is also applied by Shamans
and Buddhists in Mongolia for their stone statues. It is as if someone has
taken pity on the old man now that he has been toppled from his pedestal and
is taking care of him.
The occupants of the apartment block refer to him as Lenin-baghs: ‘Teacher
Lenin’. Lenin has left more than one grateful pupil in Mongolia. Also
the colossal concrete statue in the eastern border town of Choibalsan has
found a guardian who each spring fills up the largest cracks with cement and
applies the occasional lick of paint to the stained face.
Stalin’s lot in Mongolia is far more dramatic. His impressive statue
has been relegated to the dance floor of a disco bar, where he faces a revolving
glitter ball with an inebriated crowd jumping around at his feet. Stalin has
here been reduced to a bronze attraction and become the target of ridicule
and drunk jokes.
Mongolia’s communist heritage consists of more than just statues, but
the lot of the helmsmen shows a country that is trying to build itself a new
existence on the remnants of seventy years of socialism. The symbols of the
revolution are for the most part still in tact, but only the outside world
seems to notice them. The new Mongolia does not attach much value or significance
to the revolutionary icons of yore, and there is no sign at all of retribution
or iconoclasm. Some say this is because Mongolia never actually believed in
communism, but only chose it as a system to help it survive the twentieth
century. In their view, Lenin, Stalin and Marx were deceived in Mongolia.
Mongolia was the second country in the world to adopt communism in 1924.
Thirteen years before, after the fall of the Chinese Qing Emperor in 1911,
the head of the Mongolian Buddhists had already proclaimed the independence
of the country, but that independence was anything but secure. Mongolia had
for more than four hundred years been under Chinese rule as the Chinese province
of Outer Mongolia. To weapon itself against Chinese generals and other foreign
warlords, the Mongolian People’s Party called in the help of the Soviet
Union and changed its name to the People’s Revolutionary Party. This
was to be the beginning of a crucial period that shook the foundations of
the country. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Although the country retained its independence, it was dominated by the Soviet
Union and subjected to intensive Russification from the 1940s onwards. Towns
sprang up in the steppe, nomads became workers and the main symbols of Mongolian
identity were slowly but surely erased. Family names were banned in order
to break with the clan system and the beautiful Mongolian script was replaced
by the flat Cyrillic alphabet. Monasteries were pillaged and destroyed, and
it was even forbidden to talk in public about the exploits of Genghis Khan
and his descendants.
However, at a time when all kingdoms of Central Asia were annexed as provinces
or republics by China and the Soviet Union, Mongolia continued to exist as
an independent state. When the party secretary of a neighbouring Soviet republic
proposed that Mongolia would join the Union as a republic, the Mongolian head
of state was reported to have slapped him in the face without saying a word.
Many Mongolians still thank him for that, which is not as evident as it seems,
for the same man was responsible for the prosecutions and suppressions in
the 1930s during which tens of thousands of monks, civilians and dissidents
were executed. To that end, a Special Commission was set up in 1937 which
kept accurate records of the sentences. Between September 1937 and April 1939,
no fewer than 25,824 suspects were tried by the Commission. Of these, 20,474
were executed and 5,343 banished or imprisoned. Prosecution by the Special
Commission nearly always ended in a sentence; only seven persons were acquitted
between 1937-1939. Thousands of others disappeared without any form of trial.
Nothing and no one was spared. Party purges led to the execution or deportation
of communist cadres and their children.
Contrary to expectations, however, the country continued to exist as an independent
state, even if it was no more than a shadow of the renowned empire that at
one time had conquered one-third of the world.
Because its borders were hermetically sealed, this steppe country was hardly
known to the outside world. In the West, the old Chinese province name of
Outer Mongolia was long and systematically used to designate the country,
whilst only a few people were able to locate the country on the world map.
The country had almost become some mythical and imaginary state, whose name
was cited by the outside world as a metaphor for the farthest and most obscure
outpost of the world, as is still to some extent the case today.
In 1990, following a revolution that went almost unnoticed by the outside
world, the country shook off the yoke of the Soviet Union and free elections
were held. Mongolia had survived the twentieth century, although it had to
pay a high price, and resolutely set about the task of restoring its traditions,
religion and culture. While Stalin’s statue was carried to the disco
bar, new Buddha statues emerged in the monasteries and for the first time
in history a statue of Genghis Khan was erected. Close examination reveals
the hand of a sculptor schooled in social realism who, apparently not yet
fully accustomed to his job, has carved the previously banned Genghis Khan
out of marble, just as the first statues of the revolution were made by Buddhists
when only monks were acquainted with the art of sculpture.
The search for historical family names, which had been abolished as a feudal
legacy to break with the clan system, still continues today. In a nomadic
society, seventy years – or just three generations – is apparently
long enough for a family name to be forgotten. That is why those who do not
succeed in tracing their original family name are allowed to choose a new
one. Thus, the country’s sole cosmonaut has chosen the name ‘Sansar’,
thereby becoming the progenitor of the family ‘Cosmos’.
Just as new names are chosen, Mongolia’s reconstruction of the past
first of all means the redefinition of that past. The traditional living culture
in particular seems to have been lost. When the ritual Tsam dance, which under
communist rule had been banned for seventy years, was performed for the first
time since the lifting of the ban, it was characterised above all by improvisation
and innovation.
The country’s communist past is evident mainly in politics and is frequently
the main issue in election campaigns. In 2000, the president of the former
communist People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), who himself lost one
of his grandparents during the prosecutions of the 1930s, unexpectedly offered
his apologies on behalf of the party for the atrocities that had taken place
under the communist regime. The MPRP, which has become a member of the Socialist
International, now also wants to change its name. In the meantime, not only
a new communist party has been founded, but also a Buddhist Party, a Party
for Innovation and Progress and a National Heritage Party, even though they
have only little influence or power.
Mongolia has thus gained a momentum that appears to be unstoppable, with all
the undesired side effects this entails. The transition from a centrally planned
economy to one of the most free market economies in Asia was the first to
take its toll. For the first time in Mongolia’s history, street children
have appeared in the major towns and there is widespread poverty. Also education
and schooling are no longer as accessible as before 1990 when almost 98 per
cent of the population had learned to read and write. Mongolia is possibly
the only country in Asia where you can see the homeless and beggars fishing
newspapers out of dustbins to read the latest news.
Whereas health care made tremendous progress in the previous century, even
basic health care has now fallen prey to the market economy. Grandmothers
born in the first half of the twentieth century on the steppe land amidst
sheep in felt ger tents, saw their grandchildren being born in field hospitals
at the end of the century. Mongolia’s health care system has, however,
dramatically eroded and the best care is now available in private clinics.
For specialist care patients often need to travel abroad. In addition, unemployment
is high, alcoholism endemic and the average life expectancy is low. And yet,
quite surprisingly, the majority of the population believes that the country
is heading in the right direction.
Opinion pollsters attribute this to the young population and their patience
for the political and economic reforms that have been announced since 1990.
Half of the Mongolian population is aged under 18 and the average age of the
population lies around 23. As a result, there are not that many people who
can remember the period before 1990.
Other researchers cite the nomadic lifestyle as a reason for the almost natural
acceptance of reforms and renovations in the country. More than half of the
2.6 million Mongolians live in the steppe and urban life did not get underway
until late in the previous century. Until the twentieth century the steppe
meant the survival of the nomads, notably because no one else was able to
live there, which made the steppe a safe haven of refuge – even if it
was for the most part situated in a province of the Chinese empire.
Nomadic life on the steppe is defined primarily by constant change. The change
of seasons in an extreme continental climate, with temperature differences
of nearly hundred degrees between summer and winter, is nowhere as perceptible
as on the steppe. Life in several summer and winter camps and the trek from
arid to good grazing lands require constant adaptation to changing conditions.
According to some, it is precisely this adaptability that has piloted Mongolia
through the twentieth century. Today’s reforms, innovation and the redefinition
of the Mongolian identity and traditions illustrate this, as does the alliance
with the Soviet Union which was first of all inspired by the will to survive
and strategic motives. It is difficult to imagine that the early group of
Mongolian freedom fighters were convinced communists or had any knowledge
of the fundamental principles of communism. Marx had not even been translated
into Mongolian as late as in 1921. Perhaps Marx, Lenin and Stalin had indeed
been deceived in Mongolia.
In any case, Mongolia’s communist heritage is one that it shares with
the Soviet Union and this also explains why the related symbols and monuments
– barring a single guardian – fill present-day Mongolia with such
indifference. The price for those who survived the twentieth century consists
of the lost traditions and the past that cannot be refound and that now has
to be redefined.
Asian Art Newspaper: Facing East - stone sculpture and petroglyphs of Central Asia
Winter 2005
Tjalling Halbertsma
One of the delights of travel in Central Asia is the sheer number of ancient monuments to be found in its original surroundings, preserved by remoteness and obscurity. Chance encounters range from deer stones of the iron and bronze ages to ancient burial sites, graves and thousands of petroglyphes carefully carved in canyons at the foot of sacred peaks in the Altai Mountain range. To walk through Central Asia is to walk through time.
Most frequently though, one will stumble upon stone sculptures erected by Turkic tribes in Central Asia. The statues, balbal in Turkish, are scattered over what is now Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, western China, Russia and Mongolia. The stones are as diverse as the Turkic people that carved them and the distribution shows how wide the practice had become by the 8th century. Originally preserved by awe and ritual, the statues are now permanently guarded but remain in situ.
The balbal depict male figures with highly idiosyncratic features but they have one thing in common, they all face east. Often, two lines of stones form a ceremonial walkway accentuating the direction towards sunrise. Today they are used as beacons for travelers, but originally the stones are believed to be grave markers as many balbal stand at grave and burial sites. The graves consist of piles of stone boulders and are often surrounded by rows of rocks positioned in a square. Sometimes several graves are lined up sideways all guarded by individual balbal. The sites are easily distinguished from the much earlier kurgan graves which are circular in shape and date back over four thousand years.
But above all the Turkic figures are stunning works of art and engineering. The faces have delicate features with almond shaped eyes, curly moustache highlight the Turkic origins. Nose bridges are articulate and prolonged and mine carvings reveal earrings and other jewelry. The robes, draped over sturdy limbs and broad shoulders, differ from area to area. Hands clutch a vase or vessel and tools, such as knives or flints for making fire, dangle from decorated belts. The craftsmanship is clear: after fourteen centuries it is astonishing that the features can still be seen at all, for the sculptures stand in one of the fiercest climates in the world. Temperatures in Central Asia can drop from 40 degrees C. in summer to minus 40 degrees C. in winter, and in spring frequent sandstorms shape the sculptures rough edges into smooth lines.
Erecting the sculptures must have taken great effort because for every two meters above the ground at least one meter is buried in the sand and many of the stones measure well over three meters in height. Some of the statues have tilted slightly or fallen but most remain as they were positioned originally: Central Asia remains the world’s largest open-air museum in Asia.
In Mongolia the balbal, called khuuni chuluu in Mongolian or ‘stone man’, are predated by bagan chuluu, spectacular deer stones from the iron and bronze ages. The stone pillars also seem to be positioned towards the east and feature exquisite carvings of deer with enormous antlers rolling down their backs and elongated snouts. The few deer stones that have human faces are amongst the earliest depictions of human beings in Central Asia.
Most of the bagan chuluu are found in the heart of the Mongolian empire on the southern shores of Lake Huvsgul where they tower over three meters high. The pinnacles of granite cluster around graves from the same period but it remains unclear if they should be interpreted as grave markers or were erected for other rituals or commemorations.
The stones echo an era of two dimensional petroglyphes which be found in Bayan Olgii Province, a remote region situated at the heart of Central Asia. It is a landscape dominated by the peaks of the Altai Mountains, stretching from Russia via Mongolia to western China. At the foot of these sacred mountains over ten-thousand petroglyphes and rock engravings, depict an ancient world dominated by deer, bears, hunters, wolves and life stock. The engravings measure from a tiny argali sheep of two centimeters, to a life-size horse in full flight. The images are often cut through oxidized rock making use of the colors of different layers of the rock to make the carvings stand out from their surroundings.
Petroglyphes in Bayan Oglgii include an image of a deer attacked by wolves, hunting scenes and scores of wild animals. Others depict more domestic scenes of yaks dragging carts, the wheels and horses flattened sideways like hieroglyphs, and two-dimensional herders on horseback.
Though respective government have now taken measures to preserve the artwork from looters and decay, the sculptures and rock carvings remain in situ on the steppes and in the sacred Altai Mountains of Central Asia.
Asian Art Newspaper: Ikh Burhkait -Mongolia's largest stone Buddha
Winter 2005
Tjalling Halbertsma
It’s a long drive, after a long flight, but its well worth it. Forgotten to the world, Mongolia’s largest statue of the Buddha is among the finest of its kind. After the Bamiyan Buddha’s were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, the world was told the largest stone statue of Buddha was now found on the island Le Shan in China’s southern province of Sichuan. Comparisons with many other statues were made, but although the enormous statue of Ikh Burkhait fared a similar fate as those at Bamiyan, it was not among them.
The statue lies on a grassy hill overlooking the Khalkh River in Mongolia’s
most eastern tip of Dornod province. China and Russia are only a few kilometres
away.
Dry stone walls of over two hundred meters in length surround the statue and
at its feet a row of large stone petals depicts a lotus flower. Enormous chiselled
fragments of smashed statues still litter the grounds, or adorn altars that
are put up every few meters. Thick layers of grease with matches have been
smeared on the sacred objects, as is customary for Mongolian Buddhists. Khadags,
silk blue scarves, are tied to stones and to the branches of a few short sturdy
plants growing in one of the harshest climates in the world. Hot summers and
strong winters with temperatures falling to minus 50 Celsius have faded the
colouring on the statues into subtle pastel tints.
Over twenty shrines, stupa’s and altars surround the site but not many
pilgrims climb the hill, as Ikh Burkhait is situated in one of Mongolia’s
most remote regions.
For starters, by car it takes three days from Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar
to travel to the site, for the herdsmen of Mongolia who travel on horseback
many more.
It is so remote that less than one person per square kilometre inhabits the
steppe land around it. The few people who make it here have to camp outside,
at the feet of the statue. Apart from a few houses and felt ger-tents there
is no accommodation to cater for pilgrims or other visitors. As with so many
works of art in Mongolia, the attraction of Ikh Burkhait is in part that there
are no ticket offices, no fences and no signposts.
And then there is its size. To early visiting nomads, not accustomed to any
sort of permanent buildings or other stone construction work, the statue at
Ikh Burkhait must have been overpowering and awesome. Measuring over thirty
meters it still is.
The statue was built over a five year period and completed in 1864. Legend
has it that over a hundred artists worked on it, day and night.
Seventy years later, after Mongolia had become the second country in the world
to adopt communism, it was destroyed. Taking its size into account and the
solid monoliths it was made of, it must have taken days if not weeks to vandalize
the statue.
Then in 1990, with the withdrawal of the Soviet Union troops from Mongolia
and the collapse of communism, restoration work started. In all, restoration
took two years to complete. Many of the smaller statues have also been reconstructed,
others were pieced together and lay as puzzles on the ground.
This is where the comparison with the Bamiyan statues ends. For at Ikh Burkhait
at the least the fragments were saved, whereas the Afghan Buddha’s were
blown up to dust and rubble beyond any recognition.
Asian Art Newspaper: The road to Pearl Harbour - Revolutionary art and war memorials from Mongolia
Spring 2004
Tjalling Halbertsma
With the collapse of the Soviet Union much of the revolutionary art of Asia’s former socialist countries is slowly crumbling away. Murals of the communist dream are painted over with advertisements and bronzes of Stalin are put up in discos and bars to amuse the masses. In many countries only the socialist war memorials are maintained. Mongolia is no exception, although it may be the only country in Asia to allow Japan to erect a statue in remembrance of its fallen troops on its territory. Asian Art Newspaper takes a closer look at the art that remembers the communist revolution and the war over Mongolia.
Just before WWII one of the largest iron cast statues of the Buddha in the world was disassembled and taken away to the Soviet Union. There - it is said - it was melted to ‘make bullets to fight nazi-Germany’. The thirty meter statue had come from Mongolia and was made in 1911 to celebrate Mongolia’s independence from China.
Although it is doubtful that there were ever bullets made from the statue, it has never surfaced and in the mid-1990s a new statue was cast and erected, some say to celebrate Mongolia regaining its independence from the Soviet Union, which had by then dominated the country for 70 years.
The Soviet propaganda effort promoting the idea that the Mongolian statue was contributing to the warfare at its western front is interesting though. The Soviet Union and Mongolia had at the time been engaged in fierce fighting after Japan invaded in the eastern most tip of Mongolia in 1938 and 1939 in an attempt to establish a Japanese puppet state called ‘Mengchiang’. Between May and September 1939 Japan battled over Khalkhyn Gol, a strategic river following the Mongolian-Chinese border but after losing an astonishing 80 000 troops Japan withdrew its troops and focused its war machine again on China and ultimately Pearl Harbour. Indeed, ‘The road to Pearl Harbour, one might claim, led through Mogolia’ remarks British author Jasper Becker in his revealing book about Mongolia, The Lost Country.
The Mongolian-Soviet side suffered over 11 000 casualties at Khalkhyn Gol and it is to this battle that most war memorials in Mongolia refer. At Zaisan Mountain overlooking Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, a 360 degree mural includes a scene of Mongolian and Soviet soldiers trampling on the flag of the rising sun. But it is in the vast emptiness of the steppes around the Khalkhyn river, a three day drive eastward from the capital, that the war memorials are most numerous. In a province with less than one person per square kilometre perhaps as much as up to fifty memorials remember the casualties on the Soviet-Mongolian side. Mongolia’s eastern steppe must be one of the most cruel and unforgiving landscapes to fight a war in. It largely consists of an endless horizontal steppe without any cover, infested by mosquitos and Japanese troops must have suffered under the unfamiliar cold nights in late summer.
Rusted helmets, bullet shells and enamel mugs still litter the steppe and remind of war in an otherwise strikingly peaceful landscape of steppe grass and rolling hills. Most monuments stand abandoned and desolate in the grasslands, and only the graveyards are fenced off to keep herds and wild gazelle out. At one of the many cemeteries all graves are of unknown soldiers and the gravestones are marked with a red star, the communist equivalent of the western ‘Only known to God’. A monument with three panels depicts soldiers fighting each other with bayonets and swords.
Nearby a Japanese statue stands deserted on a ridge overlooking the Khalkhyn river. Visiting relatives of Japanese soldiers who were killed during the invasion of Mongolia have planted flowers at its feet and erected two poles with Japanese inscriptions.
One may be surprised with a Japanese memorial in Mongolia, but in September 2003 the gesture was mirrored by a visit of the head of the Mongolian Buddhists to Japan who held a memorial service for even more distant fallen troops. The Khampo Lama of Gandan Monastery visited Japan to chant sutra’s for the drowned soldiers of Kubilai Khan’s army which repeatedly tried to invade the country in the thirteenth century. On every occasion the Mongolian fleet was shipwrecked by what the Japanese were famously to call ‘Kamikaze’, Heavenly Winds, a word which seven centuries later was to get a totally new meaning when Japanese fighter pilots purposely crashed their warplanes on enemy warships.
In the district centre Sumber, not far from the Japanese statue on Mongolia’s
eastern border, an enormous iron cast memorial depicts the most dramatic war
scenes.
Soldiers jump out of waving flags, their uniforms flying in the wind and arms
stretched in anticipation of war. Overhead planes soar into the battle field
and cannons thunder. It truly is a work of art. A golden eagle pair has fittingly
built its nest on the wings of one of the airplanes. On the other side of
the statue stands a woman, as she does in the memorial hall in the Sumber
War Museum, in reference to the mothers who lost their sons in war. A room
hidden to the side is furnished with statues of deities for Japanese relatives
who occasionally visit the museum.
Other memorials are more straightforward, but many tell a local chapter of the war. In the provincial capital Choibalsan, where Lenin’s statue and that of a fallen soldier stand among a rubble of decay and collapsed buildings resembling a war town, a huge stone statue of a bomb stands in the middle of the basketball court. During the 1939 war fighter planes dropped three bombs on the town. Miraculously, none detonated.
The war planes are even found in the socialist murals on the walls of the local library, where a young woman is depicted. With one arm she holds a wheat sheaf and with the other she points in the direction of the future where the communist dream is becoming reality: little red tractors plough the fields and unlimited electricity is generated for the masses in the steppe. Over her left shoulder planes dive through the sky, prepared for the event of war. Like most socialist murals in Mongolia, the paint is fading and around her eyes and eyelashes she is pealing heavily, making her look rather sad as if she knows that even in her state of decay she has outlived the communist dream she points at.
Asian Art Newspaper: Reinventing Karakoram - Towards an ancient capital
Spring 2004
Tjalling Halbertsma
Since the beginnings of centralised government, nations have often chosen, whether for political, geographical, or military reasons, to shift their capitals. New Chinese dynasties generally proclaimed their heavenly mandate from a fresh city, Kazakhstan and Malaysia recently built new capitals, and Germany opted to abandon Bonn and return to Berlin after its reunification in 1989. Now Mongolia may just do the same and move from the Communist-era capital of Ulaanbaatar to the ancient city of Karakorum. Asian Art joins current Prime Minister Enkhbayar on a visit to the potential capital, reviewing the city plans for a city to be rebuilt from scratch.
Traditionally Mongolia’s capital travelled in a horse saddle; wherever the Khan stopped, the centre of the empire resided. Genghis Khan, founder of the legendary Mongol empire, ruled from a tent city and his palace-tent was pulled on a cart by oxen over the steppe. In 1235, however, at the dawn of what would become the largest empire the world has ever seen, one of Genghis Khan’s grandchildren decided to ground the capital in the Orkhon valley, in what is now western Mongolia. For a nomadic people, it was a revolutionary initiative. In a few years a palace was built and city walls were constructed. The Khan called his city Karakoram, the Black Camp, and early visitors compared its size to St. Denis, south of Paris. William of Rubruck, a French visitor in the 13th century, wrote to his King of France, ‘At the eastern gate grain is sold, at the western goats and sheep, at the southern one oxen and karts and at the northern gate horses.’
It was only to be a temporary capital, a few years later the Mongols abandoned it, founding Khan Balek, contemporary Beijing, to centre the capital in the enormous empire they had conquered and proclaim the Yuan dynasty in 1271. When the Yuan rule collapsed a century later, the new Chinese Ming administration went out of its way to prevent history from repeating itself, rebuilding the Great Wall the Mongols had scaled and razing Karakoram to the ground.
Over time a new administrative centre was built in Mongolia, Ikh Khuree Khot, the Large Temple City, referring to the monastery that stood at the centre of the city, surrounded by the traditional felt ger-tents that are up to this day a significant part of Ulaanbaatar. The city repeatedly changed its name after regaining its independence from China, until under Soviet influence its current name was chosen; Ulaanbaatar, the Red Hero. Nowadays, after the end of Soviet rule, the revolutionary statues and icons of Ulaanbaatar are slowly being replaced by Buddhist ones and eight centuries after his death the first statues of Genghis Khan are finally unveiled. However, the discussions about restoring the city’s old name have been dominated by a grander desire; to move the nation’s centre to its former capital on the shores of the Orkhon river.
After the country regained its independence in 1990 new bank notes were issued. They depicted an engraving of the khans’ palace in Karakoram and a silver tree, crafted by Guillaume Boucher, a 13th-century goldsmith from Paris who lived as a hostage in the city. From the tree ran four pipes with different drinks pumped up by a man hidden in the base and who would blow into a different pipe whereupon the silver angle at the summit of the tree would sound a trumpet mechanically raised to her lips.
When I visited Karakoram with a government delegation, headed by the current Prime Minister Enkhbayar, it soon became clear how destructive the Ming armies had been. There is hardly a trace of the legendary imperial city left and the silver angel of Boucher is long gone. All that remains is the Erdeenezuu monastery, built in the sixteenth century from the rubble of Karakoram. One hundred and eight stupas stand on the heavy monastery walls surrounding the main temple. Prime Minister Enkhbayar was presented with a plan for the future capital and a tour of the site – at the moment, nothing but empty steppe.
It is, however, exactly the fact that nothing remains of the legendary city that tops the current list of arguments in favour of reinstating Karakoram as Mongolia’s capital. With Ulaanbaatar increasingly congested, and poor Soviet city-planning and construction taking its toll, the plans for a new capital are only restrained by imagination. The document also argues that Karakoram will be more centrally positioned in Mongolia - Ulaanbatar is set more to the east of the landlocked country – a reasoning similar to the one that made Kubilai Khan move his capital from Karakoram to Beijing. The impulses are much the same as those which led to the founding of Washington in the States, or Canberra in Australia. The main idea is to develop an administrative capital in Karakoram and sustain Ulaanbaatar, with its railway links to Russia and China, as the country’s commercial and business centre.
Undoubtedly, in a country trying to rediscover its past after centuries of domination by China and the Soviet Union, a more nostalgic reason underlines the initiatives. Indeed, says the Mongolian Prime Minister, it is hoped that the new ancient capital will be in use on the 800th anniversary of Karakoram’s founding at the start of Mongolia’s unification and golden era.
Independent from Russia and China for the first time in two hundred years, the new Mongolia finds itself looking to its ancient past, to shape its future.
Asian Art Newspaper: Tracing the Gobi – Hulsewe-Wazniewski Project, Inner-Mongolia
October 2003
Tjalling Halbertsma
A survey of Nestorian gravestones in the Gobi region of Inner-Mongolia as recently encountered looted graves with iconography drawing upon Christian, Buddhist, and possibly even Islamic traditions. The project, sponsored by the Hulsewé-Wazniewski Society of the Sinology Department of the Netherlands University of Leiden, aims to record the scattered heritage of a vanished 13th-century people who wrote in Chinese, Mongolian and Syriac and effortlessly fused the religious imagery of both East and West. Halfway through the project, Asian Art Newspaper reports on the preliminary results.
Imagine a 13-th century cathedral with Chinese roofing, in the Sahara desert.
Now change the stained glass windows for murals of Buddha and the Eight Immortals
and add a minaret or two. Admittedly, it is a somewhat unlikely creation,
but not an impossible one. It happened, albeit on a smaller scale, seven centuries
earlier in the Gobi desert region of Inner-Mongolia, China.
In 1929 a Chinese member of Sven Hedin’s expedition to the Gobi, Huang
Wenpi, stumbled upon the remains of a lost city, Olon Sume In Tor, which has
previously been featured in Asian Art Newspaper (Lost Cities, Hidden Treasures,
January 2002). He did not spend a long time among the ruins, but in later
years other expeditions found gravestones with engravings of Christian crosses,
surrounded by Chinese and Middle Eastern religious imagery near the city walls.
The graves were those of Nestorian Christians, an offshoot Orthodox religion that once spanned from the Middle East to China. Nestorian tribes settled in the Ordos region of northern China in the thirteenth century, combining Christianity and Chinese traditions in their burial sites. Most of the graves have now been looted, and as recently as 1996 the provincial Cultural Heritage Bureau had to undertake rescue-excavations to salvage the remaining tomb objects. Many gravestones remained at the sites though, as they were too large and much too heavy for graverobbers to be carried away.
They resemble elaborately decorated coffins and are placed horizontally over the graves. The designs are varied, but often include waves and a floral pattern common to Central Asia. At the front most are decorated with crosses, sometimes on four different sides. The crosses frequently rise from lotus flowers and are surrounded with cloud patterns also used in Buddhist and Daoist depictions. Such fusions, however interesting, are not entirely unique and have been recorded before in China. Ordos bronzes found nearby show crosses decorated with Buddhist swastikas and the Tang dynasty Nestorian stone in Xian depicts a cross rising from a lotus flower and wrapped in a cloud pattern.
What makes the crosses on the Inner Mongolian gravestones so unusual is that
some of the frames around the engravings may have been influenced by yet another
tradition. Most of the frames are circular or square, but a few are shaped
like Arabic lantern windows, giving intriguing hints of Islamic influence.
The Muslim population of Northern China may well have played a role in influencing
the iconography of the Nestorian settlers. The idea of the Trinity was often
downplayed in Nestorian scriptures, and the shared idea of one God may have
formed a link between the two groups.
Many of the stones also contain inscriptions in Turkic languages, mixed with
Syrian, the common language of the Nestorian Church, and written in Syriac.
‘Pu qabra’ was chiseled into the stones, ‘this is the grave
of…’ followed by a name and sometimes 'amen'. No dates are mentioned
but context suggest the graves are from around the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
when China was ruled by the Mongolians, some of whom had converted to Christianity.
When seven centuries later, the graves were looted, the stones were spared until farmers settled in the area. Since the first sightings of the stones in the 1930s Inner-Mongolia has seen a continuous inflow of immigrants. Millions of Chinese farmers moved into the region, south of the Gobi desert, which was once known for its remoteness. With so many new farms being build, any stone became useful, and the square gravestones were frequently used as building material. Indeed, many of the stones have been found being used as corner stones and doorposts. Other stones were stacked in drystone fences or used as door lentils.
Sadly, some of the gravestones were broken during transportation and many
of the stones recorded in the 1930s have not been traced yet. An even greater
number however is believed to be buried after the stones were thrown into
the grave-pits when these were looted. Ironically, as one farmer interviewed
during the project remarked, these will eventually be found, as many of the
graves have been plundered more then once already and the looting will undoubtedly
continue.
Asian Art Newspaper: Fading Images - early photography from Mongolia
November, 2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
Once, in Mongolia, I was shown the photo album of a prominent Buddhist lama.
There were pictures from the 1930s of the monk in a Tibetan monastery, which
included images of him with politicians like Nehru and shots of him as a little
boy, when he had been recognized as the 20th incarnation of a bodhisattva
(saint). The album ended with a faded black and white photograph of an elderly
monk looking intently into the lens of an early camera. The photo was probably
taken in the late 19th century. A mentor or teacher, I presumed, before realizing
the picture was much too early for that. It transpired it was a picture of
the bodhisattva's previous incarnation. In other words, it was a portrait
of him from a previous life. Imagine that moment, when he was shown the picture
for the first time and told the history behind it.
These are the kind of moments that frequently occur while researching the
photo archives of the Mongolian Museum of National History (MMNH) in Ulanbator,
Mongolia. The collection consists of an estimated 3,000 black and white photos.
Many of the unique images date from the early 20th century and when chronologically
ordered they spell out a century of revolution, war and turmoil. Most of the
images are striking in one way or another, be they moments in history or recordings
of daily life, such as the photo of a family in front of a ger tent built
from bark stripped from pine trees (see next page). There are bizarre pictures
of a Mongolian giant posing with friends and relatives in front of a felt
ger tent (see above). The man dominates the picture entirely and only by carefully
looking at the other tiny figures in the image does one realise that he is
the one who is unusual in size. The man, Ondor Gongor, became some sort of
a national celebrity; several early European travel writers like Haslund Henning
described their meetings with Ondor Gongor in the 1920s. The woman on his
right sports the elaborate hairstyle of Khalkh Mongolian nationality, which
can also be seen in more formal portraits in the collection.
The MMNH collection contains more haunting pictures from the revolutionary
period in the late 1920s of people dying on a battlefield, being tortured
or brought before revolutionary courts. Other images are touching, like the
photograph of a man who gives a girl in Western dress a ride on a bicycle,
which appears to be a Mongolian president with his Russian wife. The one thing
that is clear is that the collection depicts a world no longer there. It is
a world of Mongolian aristocracy and serfs, of revolutionaries and Bolsheviks
and of thousands of monks in elaborate monasteries filled with treasures of
golden statues and ornaments of precious stones. Today, only a handful of
temples have survived the 20th century and much of the depicted artwork has
been lost.
But it is the early pictures from the turn of the 20th century which are of
the greatest importance for they illustrate a country and a people which Mongolia
is now trying to rediscover. Take the images of the masked tsam-dancers from
the 1920s. The dances are central to Mongolian festivals and religious worship
but were banned during the period when Mongolia was dominated by the Soviet
Union. The tsam choreography is now rediscovered and Ladakhi groups from northern
India are frequently invited to train Mongolian dancers. The Ladakhi costumes
and masks, however, differ from Mongolian ones and the craftsman who made
the original ones have all passed away. As expected, Mongolian costume-makers
now design the tsam masks from the images kept in the archives and collection
of the MMNH. The same goes for the restoration of historic sites and wall-paintings
or frescos.
Other, more formal photos of early revolutionaries in the collection are used
for state portraits, like a black and white snapshot of Danzan, a Mongolian
martyr executed in 1924. Danzan was also a trader representing an American
car manufacturer and, apart from owning several cars, he had the first Harley
Davidson in Mongolia - recorded in the original photo on which his state portrait
was modelled.
Some of the images in the MMNH collection can be matched to objects in the
museum's extensive ethnological collection, such as the costumes in the permanent
exhibition which feature in numerous photographs. One of the more delightful
matches is the right boot of the notorious Baron von Ungern Sternberg, with
his photograph taken in the 1920s. This Russian aristocrat invaded Mongolia
in 1921 with a private army of mercenaries, proclaiming he was the incarnation
of a Buddhist lama and, according to some, to try to found a 'Fourth Rome'
in Mongolia. Baron von Ungern Sternberg, nicknamed the Mad Baron in Mongolian,
was feared and respected for his daring attacks and brutality that led to
his violent death at the hands of the Bolsheviks, who captured him whilst
fleeing from his own men who had tried to assassinate him. Mongolians still
speak of the treasures and loot he reputedly hid in North Mongolia, but so
far only his boot has been found. In the photo, the Mad Baron is seated, wearing
a Mongolian deel, the Mongolian traditional dress although his boots cannot
be seen in the picture. The boot and his portrait are now both on display
at the MMNH.
Asian Art Newspaper: The Heart of the Mountain II – Putuo Shan
September, 2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
At the heart of classical China stand nine sacred mountains, four Buddhist and five Daoist, the so-called ‘Marchmounts’. The second of two parts, this article examines the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism through taking a closer look at Mount Putuo, the legendary mountain island off the coast of Eastern China that gave birth to numerous legends, pilgrimages, and China’s most popular goddess, Guanyin.
Unlike Daoism, Buddhism is not a native Chinese religion, arriving from India in the first century AD, where it encountered a religious landscape defined by the five Daoist Marchmounts and its pantheon of deities and immortals. Seeing the importance of the veneration of mountains in China, the Buddhists were quick to define their own group of four sacred mountains; the mountains of Putuo (Zhejiang province), Jiuhua (Anhui province), Emei (Sichuan province) and Wutai (Shanxi province).
Over the centuries Buddhists would identify hundreds of mountains in China as sacred , a tradition which continues to this day. Sometimes, Buddhists would take over mountains that had been worshipped by Daoists, and on many mountains deities from both religions are now venerated. In the thirteenth century, Christian pilgrims of the Church of the East would follow in this tradition, building churches on mountains such as Mount Emei and Mount Huang, but of the foreign religions arriving in China only Buddhism would last, in part because of its adaptability to China’s religious landscape and sacred geography.
The Buddhist worship of sacred mountains differed radically from the Daoist perspective, however. The five Daoist Marchmounts were primarily associated with directions, colours, and elements. Buddhism, on the other hand, chose to define the mountains as the seat of four of its main Bodhisattvas, deities who had chosen not to leave the cycle of reincarnation in order to help others achieve enlightenment. It was a fundamental change from the Daoist worldview, which held that the mountains bordered the world. Unlike the more insular and exclusively Chinese Daoism, Buddhism attracted pilgrims from outside the borders of China. To this day, for example, Mongolian pilgrims burn their incense in the monasteries and temples of Mount Wutai and Mount Emei.
Most of all, though, it is to the mountain island of Putuo that Buddhist
pilgrims come from countries as distant as Japan, Thailand and South Korea.
Putuo is the mountain of the goddess Guanyin (in Sanskrit Avalokitesvara),
the goddess of mercy and compassion and the most popular Chinese deity. Even
on Mount Tai, the sacred mountain at the heart of Daoism, a shrine is dedicated
to her. The name Putuo itself comes from the Sanskrit word ‘Potalaka’,
which designates the birthplace of a Bodhisattva. Similarly, the Potala Palace
in Tibet - the traditional seat of the Dalai Lama, who is considered by Buddhists
to be a male incarnation of Guanyin - is named after Potalaka.
The transformation of Guanyin in China is as striking as the origins of the
Four Great Mountains. Guanyin came to China depicted, like all Buddhist deities,
as male, but became transformed into a female deity in the late Tang dynasty
(618-907). At the Yungang caves in North China, which were carved over several
centuries before and during the Tang dynasty, Guanyin can be seen in both
early male and late female manifestations. After the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
the depiction became almost entirely female. From this period Guanyin is often
depicted standing in a cave, dressed in white robes and with a child in her
arms. It is this manifestation which make some art historians believe there
was an iconographic exchange between the western Virgin Mary and the Eastern
Guanyin, much like the image of Mary and the Christ child was influenced by
the Egyptian deities of Horis and Isis.
On Mount Putuo, Guanyin is mainly worshipped as the guardian deity of sailors and other travellers, but her image can be found wherever Chinese Buddhists live. Over the centuries the popularity of the goddess increased in China and her seat, the mountain island of Putuo, became a beacon for other Buddhist sites in China. The main Buddhist temple in Xiamen, Fujian province for instance, is named Nan Putuo - literally the ‘Southern Putuo’.
The pilgrims disembarking at Putuo island, pass through a exquisite Qing dynasty (1644-1911) stone gateway before reaching the monastery of Puji Si, the main temple complex at the island. Amulet-sellers hawk images of Guanyin along the pathways, one of them leading to the very cave where Guanyin is said to reside. When I visit Chao Yin cave an elderly couple is waiting for the tide to come in. ‘Sometimes’, they explain, ‘when the waves break on the rocks of the cave and the sunlight is right, Guanyin can be seen in the fine spray of water’. Deeper in the mountains of Mount Putuo a shrine to the Queen Mother of the West, an ancient almost shamanistic goddess, reminds pilgrims that Mount Putuo was once a Daoist site.
But the sacred mountains of China have, apart from becoming popular pilgrimage destinations, always been worlds in itself. Like the Daoist Marchmounts, the Great Four of Buddhism regularly feature in works of art, such as Bo-shan - incense burners - bronze mirrors, frescos and tankas. One of the numerous Tang Dynasty grottoes in Dunhuang depicts a five meter wide map of Mount Wutai, including references to its monasteries and sacred geography. Early Chinese encyclopaedias and histories also carefully list the emperors and other visitors paying homage to the holy mountains.
As for other Chinese Buddhist mountains, after the recent destruction of the two statues in Bamiyan, the world's largest stone Buddha is now in China. The Buddha figure is seated at foot of the mountain island of Mount Le in Sichuan, a province abundant with sacred mountains venerated by both Buddhists and Daoists. In 1988 a Chinese farmer visiting the site noticed that Mount Le in its totality resembled a reclining Buddha, extending the veneration of the statue to the entire island. It is this creation of sacred sites and the Chinese transformation of Guanyin which show the adaptability of Buddhism in China, an adaptability it needed to secure its place in a religious landscape defined by the five sacred mountains of Daoism.
The Heart of the Mountain I - Hua Shan
2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
At the heart of classical China stand nine sacred mountains: the five Daoist
Wu Yue, the so-called ‘Marchmounts’, and the Great Four of Buddhism.
The first of two parts, this article describes the world of the Daoist Marchmounts
by taking a closer look at Huashan, the Lotus Mountain, a realm of immortals,
poetry and sacred pathways. The forthcoming article focuses on the four Buddhist
mountains and their depiction in Chinese art.
For over two thousand years Chinese pilgrims and priests have worshipped Huashan in western China. The five peaks of the mountain rise like the petals of a lotus flower from the plains of Shaanxi province. To climb Huashan is to travel through Tang dynasty poetry and sacred geography. Monks and hermits have engraved the rocks and stones along the pathway with classical poems and calligraphy. The pathway winds itself along legends, stories and the evocative names of natural features. A steep ridge leading to Middle Peak is called the ‘Black Dragon Spine’; a few meters further along two enormous characters are engraved in a rock slab at a stone staircase named ‘Ladder to Heaven’. Some pilgrims will tell you that there are characters inscribed on the summit that can only be seen from the heavens. Other poems are cut in slabs of rock overhanging crevasses, carved, according to legend, by winged monks who built their ‘suspended temples’ against vertical rock cliffs. (picture)
Huashan is the western mountain in a group of five Daoist Marchmounts deeply embedded in China’s religion and geography. (picture) Together with the four rivers, the Marchmounts form the entire world which was perceived as being square, as opposed to the round heavens. Daoists follow the Dao, literally the Way or Path, and on Mount Huashan the Dao becomes visible in the single pathway, for there is only one route up this sacred mountain.
Traditionally seen as dangerous places where mythical beasts roam, but also where immortality might be found, all mountains are worshipped as the source of water so vital to agricultural China because of the clouds, the ‘dragons vapor’, which form around their peaks. But the five Marchmounts of Huashan, Songshan, Northern and Southern Hengshan, and Taishan are granted special veneration. Each is linked to a special animal, element, colour, and direction. Huashan is associated with the tiger, metal and the color white, traditionally the color of death and mourning.
Huashan is the Marchmount of the West, the direction of the Western Paradise, the ancient deity of the Queen Mother of the West and the mythical sage Laozi. Indeed, the stone furnace on which Laozi brewed his longevity potion can be found on Huashan’s western summit and at the countless shrines along the pathway the Queen Mother of the West, Xi Wangmu, is worshipped. According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Shanhai Jing, the Queen Mother of the West lives on the imaginary Jade Mountain, tending the peaches of immortality. Huashan is the closest one comes to finding Jade Mountain and in the search for immortality, pilgrims climb the pathway at night to reach the spectacular eastern summit before sunrise.
The pilgims set out from Jade Spring Temple, cross the river and take their first rest at Tai Ping Tai, the Terrace of Heavenly Peace. Here they pass the engraved character ‘xian’ for ‘immortal’, which consists of both the characters for ‘man’ and ‘mountain’. From the terrace a trail runs to one of the many hermit caves on Huashan, a vertical line of foot and handholds, where an iron chain provides the only means of support in the rock face (picture). The hermit caves are said to lead to the heart of the mountain, following China’s classical division between inner and outer worlds.
Continuing their climb, the pilgrims pass the two Qing Ke Ping temples and reach the ‘Point where the horses turn back’ at a steep stone staircase that rises over a thousand steps to North Peak. From here the pilgrim must continue on foot. The massive plateau of the four other peaks is reached over the ‘Dragon’s Spine’, a narrow ridge with drops of over two hundred feet at each side. Here pilgrims can see their first view of East Peak, where a giant pressed his hand against the mountain, leaving an enormous but distinct handprint in the rock face. Ideally pilgrims burn their incense on each of the five peaks of Huashan before returning to East Peak to view sunrise. If lucky they will see a circular rainbow around the sun, which is considered very auspicious.
On their way back most visitors will rest at a small Chinese pavilion that serves as a reminder of an encounter between the empire and the heavens. In Chinese classical thought, mountains are seen as intermediaries between heaven and earth, not unlike the image of smoke rising from an incense burner into the heavens. Apart from pilgrims and Daoists, emperors would also climb the mountain after burning incense at the imperial temple dedicated to the goddess of Huashan. (picture) ‘The state lies in shatters; only mountains and rivers remain’ reads a line of a Tang dynasty poem, and countless emperors therefore attempted to consolidate their rule by paying respect to the Marchmounts.
The Chinese pavilion at the Lotus Mountain commemorates a chess game between Emperor Zhao Kuangyin of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), and the Daoist monk Chen Tuan. Chen Tuan won the game, and thereafter the community living on the mountain was exempt from taxation and other obligations to the empire. Later emperors continued this tradition and donated temples or sponsored the carving of characters on the mountain, a practice that still continues. The current Chinese President Jiang Zemin wrote his poem ‘Gazing at the reclining pine on Tiandu Peak’ climbing a sacred mountain, and the poem has been added to the countless other inscriptions on Huangshan.
The numerous storytellers on Huashan now immortalize many of the legendary visits of emperors, cadres and sages. The stories tell of officials and hermits declining empire and power, reminding emperor and ruler that ultimately ‘only mountains and rivers remain’.
Asian Art Newspaper: Journey West
February 2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
Almost a century before Columbus sailed his ‘Santa Maria’ to America, the Chinese Admiral Zheng He navigated his fleet from China to as far West as Mogadishu on the eastern shores of Africa. The fleet contained up to sixty-two gigantic ships and a crew of thirty thousand sailors. Zheng He brought back for his emperor tribute, maps, and foreign beasts, including an African giraffe and ostriches, creatures never seen in China before. For a brief period at the start of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD), China was to rule the seas, until, at last, the government closed the door on any travel outside China.
Zheng He, who made seven extraordinary voyages, was an unusual combination of conquering admiral, devout Muslim and imperial eunuch. Born into a Muslim family in 1371, with both a father and grandfather who had completed the Haj to Makkha, he must always have been aware of a world outside China. His triple persona was to have a profound influence on his explorations and discoveries.
It is surprising that Zheng He was able to make his voyages at all. The Ming had overthrown the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368 AD) and had made great efforts to return to a pure Han Chinese civilization, undertaking and reviving traditional Chinese projects abandoned by the Mongols. The Grand Canal was completed and the Great Wall rebuilt. Karakoram, the former Mongolian capital, was razed to the ground, and the Mongol people driven into the northern Yablonoi mountains. If there was a legacy the Mongols had left the Ming emperors, it was a fear of foreign rule in China. The motto of the age was once again the classic poem ‘Xi qu yu men wu gu ren,’ ‘Passing West through the Jade gate one will no longer find friends.’
At the same time, though, the emperor Yong Le (reign 1402-1425 AD), was instituting a golden age of Chinese exploration, and gave his favored eunuch and admiral Zheng He his opportunity to explore the southern and western oceans. China had already discovered the compass and mastered techniques of cartography as yet unknown in Europe. A century before Zheng He’s travels, the Yuan dynasty armies had sailed East to conquer Japan, but the legendary kamikaze, literally the ‘heavenly storms’, repeatedly prevented the ships from landing on Japanese shores and blew the fleets back to the mainland. Admiral Zheng He would encounter equally strong storms that eventually forced him to land on the East African coast.
The ships Zheng He now had at his disposal were numerous and enormous. The largest among them measured up to 400 feet, over four times the size of Columbus’ ‘Santa Maria.’ The ships were filled with treasures, merchandise and supplies for the journey. Some of the porcelain carried by the Treasure Fleet can still be seen in the museum of Mombassa, on Kenya’s eastern coast.
In total, Zheng He made between 1405 and 1433 seven voyages into the southern and western seas, each journey taking up to two years. In three decades the Treasure Fleet sailed an astonishing 35.000 miles. It was on his fourth voyage that Admiral Zheng reached the East coast of Africa and sailed as far South as Mogadishu. Here Zheng He acquired a giraffe, a zebra and a pair of ostriches, which he called ‘camel birds’. He managed to keep the animals alive and bring them back to the imperial court in 1415 AD.
Two years later, before sailing on his next voyage, Zheng He paid tribute to the tombs of two Muslim pilgrims who had arrived in China from Medina, around the year 622 AD, sent - according to legend - to China by the Prophet Mohammed. Their tombs are decorated with Quranic inscriptions and Islamic images of the crescent moon, but also classical Chinese and Buddhist motives of clouds and lotus petals. A distinct Chinese pagoda-shaped roof shelters the tombs. (Foto) This fusion of classical Chinese and Islamic imagery can be found at most Islamic sites in China, such as the Qing Zhen Mosque in Hohhot, where minarets are build as classical Chinese pagodas. (foto)
Zheng He’s visit to the tombs of the two early Muslim pilgrims is commemorated by a stone inscription at the site that reads: “The Imperial Envoy, Commander and Eunuch Zheng He went on an official mission to Hormuz and other countries in the Western Seas. He offered incense here on the 16th day of the 5th month in the 15th year of Yong Le. May the saints bless him … Inscribed by the Zhenfu Pu Heri, protected by the Prophet.”
The tombs Zheng He visited are in the Ling Mountains West of Quanzhou, a Chinese Muslim stronghold. Thirteen villages around the area still share the Muslim name Ting, and turn West to Makkha for their daily prayers. The Ting families claim their ancestry from the original Muslim settlers who arrived in China during the first tide of Islam in the early Tang dynasty (618-907 AD). The settlers and traders came from the west, from Arabia, Persia and Central Asia. Zheng He met the Ting descendents and visited their characteristic horseshoe-shaped graves in the Ling Mountains. (foto) In Quanzhou, Zheng He also contributed to China’s earliest mosque, build in 1009 AD. The Pure and Clear Ashab mosque at Tumen street must have been a marvel of architecture among the Buddhist and Taoist shrines in Ming dynasty China (foto).
Zheng He was to make two more voyages bringing him to Indonesia, The Philippines,
Sri Lanka and the Middle East. On his seventh and final voyage, in 1433, the
Imperial Eunuch, Admiral and Muslim died, leaving a legacy of unparalled marine
exploration as diverse as himself. It was a legacy based on a worldview created
by his Muslim forefathers who had completed the Haj to Makkha and a legacy
that left a giraffe and two ‘camel birds’ wandering in the gardens
of the Ming imperial palace.
Asian Art Newspaper: Lost Cities Hidden Treasures - Olon Sume In Tor
January 2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
The Gobi desert, a region at the outer side of the Great Wall between contemporary China and Mongolia, is one of the remotest deserts in the world and yet, provided that there was a trickle of water, people built entire cities among its sand dunes. Take Olon Sume In Tor, a city lost for such a long time that even its name has been forgotten, for its current name means nothing more than City of Many Ruins.
After eight hundred years its walls still stand in the Ordos plain of what is now the Chinese province of Inner-Mongolia. Built in the thirteenth century on the crossroads of empires, the city lies in a landscape of horizontals, a dry riverbed nearby providing the only reference. Seven centuries later the tones in the walls of Olon Sume are worn by sand and storm, like iceblocks melting away in the desert heat. Fragments of glazed tiles and pieces of pottery litter the grounds of what once was a bustling centre of commerce and pilgrimage. The remains of Olon Sume were discovered in 1929, but the secrets it kept are now unlocked from its ruins.
For Olon Sume In Tor was a city built by Christians from Central Asia who
decorated their tombstones with crosses rising from lotus flowers and painted
their tiles with a gothic flower motif.
Only a few years after its discovery the area was sealed off by the Japanese
invasion of 1937 and so was out of bounds for foreigners when the Peoples
Republic of China was proclaimed. Because of its sensitive border with Mongolia,
foreigners still cannot legally visit the city without permission from the
Liberation Army, the Public Security Bureau and other Chinese authorities.
The day I visited, a sandstorm hammered away on the ruins and not a soul could
be seen. Holes in the earthen mounds at the eastern site of the city showed
that graverobbers had passed through the area.
I had with me the diary of Miss Lum, an English lady who visited the site in the 1930s, sketching its walls and the lotus-crosses on the graves. She truly was an eccentric pioneer and travelled the area in a Ford convertible in the company of a Mongol prince. The stones and artwork she sketched have long since gone but Olon Sume In Tor is still an evocative place and it is not difficult to imagine the trade caravans arriving at its city gates centuries ago. One of the caravans visiting the city in the thirteenth century was to change the eastern and western worlds.
At the time Marco Polo travelled in China two monks rode in the opposite direction en route visiting Olon Sume. One of these early travellers, Mar Markus, was born in Olon Sume In Tor, his fellow companion, Rabban Sauma, came from Khan Balek, contemporary Beijing. They travelled further west, and towards the end of the thirteenth century Rabban Sauma reached Rome to become the first Chinese visitor in Europe whose name we know. Like Marco Polo’s ‘Description of the World’, which also mentions the city of Olon Sume, Rabban Sauma wrote a diary giving China an unprecedented view of the western world.
Their visit to Olon Sume In Tor is only part of their story, but the city was an important stop for all travelers passing the region. There were Uigurs from East Turkestan, merchants from Persia and Christian craftsmen working for the Mongolian administration; people who spoke Syrian, Chinese, and Monglian languages and who wrote in a script that they borrowed from afar. The inscriptions on their gravestones are written in Syriac but in a Turkic language, not unlike the Secret History of the Mongolian Empire which also used different scripts and languages. They truly lived on the crossroads of East and West.
Bronze artifacts found near Olon Sume show Christian crosses decorated with
Buddhist swastikas, doves and the double-headed eagle of the Byzantine Empire.
The precious objects were used by a people that fused Buddhism and Christianity
with strong hamanistic rituals. The bronzes can now be seen at the Hong Kong
University Museum and Art Gallery, which owns almost a thousand of these magnificent
amulets. Olon Sume In Tor itself was abandoned at the end of the Yuan rule
of China. Over the centuries people forgot its name until it became what was
there; the City of Many
Ruins.
I still find it amazing that we know so much of a place that has been lost and forgotten for so many centuries. We even know why it was lost to the world. The water still trickles in a tiny stream nearby and probably did so when the last citizens fled the city because of war and disease. In one giant sweep the black plague ravaged through the region and filled the graves. From the Gobi desert Rabban Sauma and Mar Markus traveled to the Taklamakan. The Taklamakan is situated in China’s northwestern corner, its name meaning in the local language something like ‘Go-in-never-come-out’.
It seems incomprehensible that entire cities could be lost for centuries, and yet in the vast expanse of Taklamakan desert it happened on more than one occasion. Cities like Po Chengzi in China’s western corner were built and forgotten until someone stumbled on their ancient walls over a thousand years later. During sandstorms, their walls rise from the desert, only to be swallowed again by time and dust.
Travelling through the Taklamakan some of the ancient cities which Rabban Sauma and his companion visited can still be found shimmering at the horizon. Distances are deceptive, but once reached the remains speak of Tang dynasty peoples and cultures which thrived among the now crumbling walls. It was in the lost cities of Miran, Khocho and Dunhuang that, at the turn of the twentieth century, a treasury trove of frescos and manuscripts was found. Some of the paintings dated back to the fifth century and most of the manuscripts had been hidden for over ten centuries. Among the finds were frescos of angels, their eyes wide open and wings spread on their backs, and the earliest printed book in the world. The book was a Buddhist sutra printed about seven centuries before the West was able to do so. Some of the frescos were signed by a man who called himself Titus, a westerner who lived half a world away from where he was born.
Many other cities of the Taklamakan, such as Gua Zhoucheng in Gansu, were garrison posts, guarding China’s western territories beyond the reach of the Great Wall. Along the caravan-route through the desert defence towers were built for communication and supply purposes, giving traders and pilgrims like Sauma and Markus a beacon on the horizon. Here the two pilgrims left classical China to travel to the great cities of Persia and Western Europe. The region which Markus and Sauma left behind was just captured by the Mongols who traditionally carried their capital in a horse saddle; wherever the Khan travelled resided the capital. After finally building their first ever capital, Karakoram, China’s new rulers of the Yuan dynasty (1280-1267 AD) founded Khan Balek, contemporary Beijing. Despite losing power within a century, the city of Beijing remains until this day. Mongolia’s former capital Karakoram on the other hand was razed to the ground by Chinese troops ensuring history would never repeat itself.
Karakoram is now a city truly lost for, though we know its location, only
a few fragments remain of the heart of the largest empire the world has ever
seen.
South China Morning Post: Wing Commanders – eagle hunters of Western Mongolia
15 December 2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
Tucked away in Mongolia’s westernmost corner lives a small Kazakh community of extraordinary hunters. They hunt from horseback in the Altai mountains for fox, rabbit and wolf. But unlike other Mongolians who carry Russian Vintov-rifles or even Kalashnikovs, these men hunt with birds of prey – carrying on their arm no less a bird than the majestic and fierce Golden Eagle. In October, on their first hunt of this years season, I ride with two eagle hunters, known in Kazakh as Rich Island (Aralbay) and Happiness (Bakyt), through the Altai Mountains, traveling to a yearly festival where over forty falconers compete.
“We only hunt with female eagles. They are larger and far more aggressive than the males”, explained Aralbay, stroking the hooded bird crouching on his arm. Restrained by the hood it sits perfectly balanced and patient on his arm, until Aralbay pulls the hood off and the bird jumps to life, scanning the valley below for prey. “At home, when I bring out my eagle, the women hurriedly bring their babies indoors”, laughs Aralbay. I can see why. The creature Aralbay carries is the largest bird I have so far encountered in Mongolia and, because of its weight, Aralbay’s arm has to be supported by a forked pole connected to his saddle. The eagle’s beak is beautifully curved and strong enough to tear raw meat of its prey and her talons are bigger than my hands. Aralbay wears a thick leather glove, up to his elbow to avoid the talons piercing his clothing and arm. His hand grasps two leather strips attached to the feet of the bird, which Aralbay can release to launch the animal when he has spotted a fox or a wolf. It is a majestic bird, in size, character and appearance, but its eyes draw my sharpest attention. They are a bird of prey’s eyes, with eyelids that close vertically and intense deep yellow irises; believed to be eight times more accurate than human eyes and as alert and focused as only a Golden Eagle can be.
Aralbay lives with his family in a felt ger-tent in the western province of Bayan Ulgii. It is a region dominated by the Altai Mountains, which isolates the area from Mongolia’s steppes to the east. Like most Kazakh, Aralbay herds camel, sheep and horses. The Kazakh are a minority people in Mongolia, and although in the early 1990s thousands left to settle in newly independent Kazakhstan many have returned to Mongolia’s westernmost province. Mongolian Kazahk pride themselves as being different from the Mongolians, speaking their own language, practicing Islam and having their own set of customs. And the Kazakh are well-known for their fondness of colour; Aralbays felt ger-tent is decorated with colorful wall hangings and thick carpets and the women dress in bright red and green garments. The door of his ger-tent has no less then seven different colored panels on it. Nearby stand the tents of Aralbay’s relatives and two neighbors who look after his animals when Aralbay is out hunting in the Altai. It is his eagle that sets him out from his neighbors, for although eagle hunting in the region dates back almost two-thousand years, only an estimated 300 eagle hunters currently live in western Mongolia.
When he is not hunting, Aralbay keeps the bird tied to a wooden log on an island in the river next to his ger-tent. The Island is out of bounds for his children. When I cross the river to get to the island, I can see that the bird is not wearing its hood and has already spotted me. The eagle tilts her head towards me, and after that initial glance completely ignores me until I move away again. One of its feet is tied to a thick leather leash connected to a trunk.
Seven years ago, Aralbay took the bird from its nest, not without risk given the aggressive protectiveness of female eagles. “I climbed up to the nest when the mother eagle was hunting”, he explains. He broke the captured bird by strapping her to a horizontal line. Every time the eagle wanted to fly or jump away the bird tumbled upside down. After two days on its line the bird was exhausted and broken, and training began. “The first time I called the bird I had starved her and waved a strip of rabbit meat at her, but when she came flying towards me I panicked and tossed the meat away”, Aralbay says. “But the bird went for the meat instead of me and I had learned the eagle hunters’ first lesson: ‘A dog will work for his owner, an eagle will only work for meat’”. From Aralbay’s belt dangles a beautiful embroidered pouch, filled with strips of bright red rabbit meat that he uses to lure the bird back to him. The hardest part is to teach the bird not to start eating from the fox it has caught, in order to avoid damaging the skin.
For this first hunt of the season Aralbay has starved his bird for ten days, feeding it only some black tea. He allows the bird to eat a few scraps of the lean rabbit meat when it returns after flight.
We ride our horses along a ridge of the mountains, and when we reach the summit Aralbay asks me to dismount. He points out the direction I have to walk and explains to make as much noise as possible. By throwing rocks from the mountain slope and with much shouting I will flush the fox towards Aralbay and his fellow hunter Bakyt. Bakyt’s eagle is too young to hunt, but Bakyt will join the hunt to familiarize his eagle with the hunting environment. Meanwhile I scramble over rocks, shouting, yelling, and pushing slabs of stone down the steep mountain side, the first days without much result.
On the third day however, I see Aralbay release his eagle after taking off her hood and pointing the bird into the direction of the fox Aralbay has spotted. I can see the leather straps dangling from its feet when the bird slowly gains height and circles the valley, gliding on strong winds until it goes into a steep dive. The eagle has folded its wings back and gains speed and reaches the fox in a near perfect catch. The strong winds, however, make the bird tumble and spread its wings while it tries to hold on to the fox. It’s the fox’s lucky day as it escapes from the birds grip and gets away into the rocky terrain. The eagle takes off again and lands on a nearby, rock where it stays.
Aralbay shouts at the bird and waves a gloved hand full of meat to his bird. “The bird has strong character and when she fails the catch, she is reluctant to come back”, he has mentioned to me earlier. This time the bird returns without hesitation, but Aralbay is irritated. He wants to enter the festival grounds with a fox skin dangling from his saddle, but it is the first hunt of the season and because there is no snow in the valleys yet, the foxes are difficult to spot among the brown and orange rocks and autumn vegetation.
Aralbay, however, remains keen to get to the eagle festival in the provincial capital Ulgii. It is the only major eagle hunting event in Mongolia and Aralbay feels his eagle has a good chance to win the competition. He has saddled his horse with his best saddle, and silver bells and ornaments dangle from the reigns. Aralbay wears a fox skin hat and the distinctive black Kazakh ‘deel’, a long wide garment ideal for riding and kept together with a belt of silver ornaments. He has polished the hood of his eagle and tied a tuff of decorative feathers to its back.
Reaching the festival grounds already over forty eagle hunters, known as ‘Burket’ in Kazakh, have gathered. The youngest is a boy of fifteen years who carries the only male eagle competing in the festival, since the boy is not old enough to hunt with the much larger females. The hunter who receives the most respect is a Kazakh elder of 86 years. The eagle he has brought is his seventh bird and he keeps the eagles, at longest, ten years and then releases them back into the wild. Some of the hunters wear horse skin garments, others have elaborate Kazakh motifs stitched on their clothing. All ride their best horses and carefully inspect the fitness of each other’s eagles.
Over the next days the hunters compete in calling their eagles to their outstretched arms while galloping their horses. The birds circle the valley before diving to their owners or to rabbit skins are pulled from a string behind a galloping horse. A panel of judges, sitting behind a wooden desk at the foot of a mountain, solemnly raise signs with the figures the hunters have scored.
Aralbay gets 9,9,9,9,8 and comes third. “Ha”, he whispers to
me from his horse, holding the leather straps tied to the bird firmly in his
gloved hand.. “Number one was indeed a strong eagle, but I should have
had number two”. On his arm crouches his eagle, the hooded head pulled
back between its shoulders.
South China Morning Post: Peak Season – Hua Shan
15 July 2002
Tjalling Halbertsma
At the heart of classical China stand five sacred mountains; the Daoist Wu Yue, known as the ‘Marchmounts’. Preserved for centuries by their remoteness and traditional sanctity, the mountains now face a threat that the monks and hermits on these mountains could have never imagined; mass tourism, demanding karaoke, cable cars and related facilities. At the western Marchmount of Huashan in Shaanxi province, the Lotus Mountain, hotels and bars are now housed in what were once Daoist temples and grottoes. Other temples and monasteries remain closed after monks were forced to abandon the sites during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Today, only a handful of what were once over one hundred former temples and shrines on Mount Huashan have been preserved by the Daoist community.
Having worked in the mid-nineties on a conservation programme at the western Marchmount of Huashan, I decided to climb the Lotus Mountain for a last time, before a cable car will open its most remote peaks to karaoke and possibly bungee jumping. The fortunetellers, daoist priests and hawkers I met on the mountain fear the worst.
The five peaks of the mountain rise like the petals of a lotus flower from the plains of Shaanxi province, and to climb Mount Huashan is to travel through Tang dynasty poetry and sacred geography. Monks have engraved the rocks and stones along the pathway with classical poems and calligraphy. The pathway winds itself along legends, stories and the evocative names of natural features. A steep ridge leading to Middle Peak is called the ‘Black Dragon Spine’, a few meters further along two enormous characters are engraved in a rock slab at a stone staircase naming it the ‘Ladder to Heaven’. Some Daoists at Mount Huashan will tell you that there are characters inscribed on the summit that can only be seen from the heavens. Other poems are cut in slabs of rock overhanging crevasses, carved, according to legend, by winged monks who built their ‘suspended temples’ against vertical rock cliffs.
Mount Huashan is the westernmost of the Marchmounts, which, together with China’s four main rivers form the entire world, perceived by the Chinese as square, as opposed to the round heavens. It is a worldview that still can be seen in cities such as Beijing where the circular Tiantan Temple of Heaven is mirrored by the square Ditan Temple of Earth. Daoists follow the Dao, literally the Way or Path, symbolized on Huashan by the fact that there was traditionally only one single path up the mountain. Now a cable car brings visitors in less than ten minutes to North Peak, the first of five peaks along the ancient pathway. Daoist priests in a temple nearby fume at the cable car one remarking that “only gods and immortals fly to the peaks of Mount Huashan”. It seems only a matter of time before an investor is found to connect the cable car with the other peaks, and a proposal by the Management Bureau of Mount Huashan to extend the cable to Mount Huashans highest peak is currently under review by the provincial authorities.
Traditionally seen as dangerous places where mythical beasts roam, but also where immortality and a long life might be found, most mountains in China are worshipped as the sources of water so vital to agricultural China because of the clouds, the ‘dragons vapor’, which form around their peaks. International conservation agencies such as World Wide Fund for Nature now recognize that such notions may contribute to the preservation of mountain regions, and the United Nations has proclaimed the year 2002 as the International Year of Mountains.
Nominations of sacred mountains at Unesco’s World Heritage programme have increased over the past years. China has repeatedly nominated its sacred mountains for World Heritage status after Taishan Mountain in Shandong province was included in the programme. Daoists at Mount Huashan, however, fear that inclusion in such programmes will keep temples closed or may restrict their ritual practices, such as the burning of incense at the rare sites where frescoes and murals survived the Cultural Revolution. Originally built by Daoists, the temples, shrines and spectacular pathways at Huashan Mountain are now controlled by a local Management Bureau, which is reluctant to return temples and shrines to their original custodians, regardless of official state policy. Instead, the Management Bureau favors developing such sites for tourism and to the chagrin of pilgrims, visitors now have to buy an entry ticket to visit the mountain and its temples.
The construction of the cable car to North Peak has undoubtedly increased tourism, encouraging plans for the extension of the cable car to the other four peaks. The majority of visitors to the Lotus Mountain still climb the mountain on foot though, for religious or economic reasons. Pilgrims traditionally climb the pathway at night to reach the spectacular eastern summit before sunrise. They set out from Jade Spring Temple, cross the river and take their first rest at Tai Pingtai, the Terrace of Heavenly Peace. Here they pass the engraved character ‘xian’ for ‘immortal’, which consists of both the characters for ‘man’ and ‘mountain’. From the terrace a trail runs to one of the many hermit caves on Mount Huashan, a vertical line of foot and handholds, where an iron chain provides the only means of support in the rock face. The hermit caves are said to lead to the heart of the mountain, following China’s classical division between inner and outer worlds.
Continuing their climb, the pilgrims pass the two Qing Keping temples and reach the ‘Point where the horses turn back’ at a steep stone staircase that rises over a thousand steps to North Peak, the destination of the first phase of the cable car. From here both pilgrim and tourist must continue on foot. The massive plateau of the four other peaks is reached over the ‘Dragon’s Spine’, a narrow ridge with drops of over two hundred feet at each side. Couples climbing the mountain chain two locks to the hand railing before throwing the keys in the abyss. It is said as long as the locks remain locked to each other and to the mountain the couple will be fortunate. Along the ridge literally hundreds of pad-locks cover the railings.
From the ‘Dragon’s Spine’ pilgrims can see their first view of East Peak, where according to legend a giant pressed his hand against the mountain, leaving an enormous but distinct handprint in the rock face. Ideally pilgrims burn their incense on each of the five peaks of Mount Huashan before returning to East Peak to view sunrise. If lucky they will see a circular rainbow around the sun, which is considered very auspicious. Nearby a hanging pathway, build out of wooden planks and iron chains, ranks among the most spectacular routes on the mountain. The walkway is constructed against a vertical rock face and, notwithstanding a drop of over 120 meters, there is no hand railing.
The proposed cable car will bypass the ‘Dragon’s Spine’ and head directly for the summit of Mount Huashan, where a ruined temple hints at the Daoists once living there. The site is now managed by local authorities, who abandoned initial plans for a helicopter field in favor of the cable car extension. The project is hotly debated along the trails of Mount Huashan. The Daoists are not alone in their dislike for the project. Large communities of hawkers make a living from renting out boots, torches and warm clothing to the many ill-prepared climbers who visit Mount Huashan. Local residents running small businesses along the pathway, and who would otherwise benefit from an increase in visitors, fear climbers will no longer pass their food stalls to pause for tea, noodles and watermelon. One of the amulet sellers suggests that the cable car should only bring people down the mountain, a compromise which is halfheartedly welcomed by other hawkers along the pathway. A fortuneteller who has joined the discussions keeps silent for the moment. But it are the porters who have most to fear, as the cable car will compete directly with their livelihoods ferrying food and other goods up the mountain.
So far the cable car to North Peak has only affected business below the cable car station, as visitors to the other peaks still have to climb the pathway on foot, passing stalls that rely on the porters. Carrying loads of over fifty kilos each, it takes the porters eleven hours to reach the summit, before returning to the foot of the mountain for another ascent the following day.
On their descent the porters rest at a small Chinese pavilion that serves as a reminder of an encounter between state and mountain. In Chinese classical thought, mountains are seen as intermediaries between heaven and earth, not unlike the image of smoke rising from an incense burner into the heavens. Apart from pilgrims and Daoists, also emperors would climb the mountain after burning incense at the imperial temple dedicated to the goddess of Mount Huashan. ‘The state lies in shatters; only mountains and rivers remain’ reads a line of a Tang dynasty poem, and countless emperors therefore attempted to consolidate their rule by paying respect to the Marchmounts.
The Chinese pavilion at the Lotus Mountain commemorates a chess game between Emperor Zhao Kuangyin of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127 CE), and the daoist priest Chen Tuan. Chen Tuan won the game, and thereafter the community living on the mountain was exempt from taxation and other obligations to the empire. It is legend storytellers at the foot of Mount Hua will tell you for a small fee. Later rulers continued this tradition and donated temples or sponsored the carving of characters on the mountain, a practice that continues to this day.
Mao Zedong made his legendary statement ‘The east is red’ at the summit of Mount Taishan, the most sacred mountain in China. Current Chinese President Jiang Zemin drew from similar traditions when he wrote his poem ‘Gazing at the reclining pine on Tiandu Peak’ during a stay at Mount Huangshan in Anhui province. The quotations have now been added to the countless other inscriptions on the mountains and both sacred mountains have recently been installed with cable cars.
Storytellers on Mount Huashan now immortalize many of these legendary visits of emperors, cadres and sages to the Lotus Mountain. Ironically, the legends tell of officials and hermits declining empire and power, reminding emperor, ruler and their audience that ultimately ‘only mountains and rivers remain.’
For the Daoists and local residents living on the slopes of the Lotus Mountain, however, it seems a matter of time before the last part of the cable car to Mount Huashans summit will be approved by the provincial governments, funded and installed, changing the mountain as well as their lives for good. “The cable car will be extended,” says the fortuneteller, confirming what many already fear.
South China Morning Post: Crosses in the dust - Olon Sume In Tor
20 September 2001
Tjalling Halbertsma
After seven centuries of one of the fiercest climates in the world, I am amazed
how well the city walls of Olon Sume In Tor have survived the harsh conditions
of the Gobi desert. Temperatures in Inner Mongolia, one of China’s most
northern provinces, rise from -30 in winter to a scorching +40 degrees centigrade
in summer, and frequent sandstorms wear away any structure built in the Gobi
region. Green glazed tiles and fragments of bricks and pillar bases now scatter
the grounds of Olon Sume In Tor, the ancient city once dominated by palaces,
gardens and churches. For this city forms the heart of a thirteen-century
Christian community in China. A community who engraved the gravestones of
their deceased with a cross rising from a lotus flower and who effortlessly
fused Buddhist swastikas with Christian iconography.
I have with me the diary of Miss Lum, an eccentric English lady who visited the remains of Olon Sume In Tor in the mid 1930’s. She travelled in a Ford convertible, in the company of a Mongol prince and the son of a missionary couple, who had once guided the explorer Sven Hedin through Central Asia. The Prince drove, ‘with more enthusiasm than skill’ remark the memoirs of Miss Lum. Eventually the group found Olon Sume In Tor but also several stones decorated with a Central Asian flower motif from which Christian crosses rose. The stones were inscribed with a mysterious script they could not read. But with the invasion of the Japanese army in Inner Mongolia in 1937, Miss Lum’s expedition ran out of time and travel routes were diverted to avoid Japanese troops.
Although extremely rare, similar stone crosses can still be found in northern Inner Mongolia. Following the travels of Miss Lum, I spotted a large box-shaped stone in the wall of a farmer’s courtyard at the Chinese-Mongolian border. The stone was inscribed with highly stylized waves and, unmistakably, three thirteen-century crosses of the Church of the East. Other stones I found featured similar motifs and short inscriptions.
Having sent the inscriptions to Dr. Heleen Murre - a specialist on the Church of the East at Leiden University in the Netherlands- she identified the elongated stones as gravestones.
Dr. Murre explains: “All inscriptions start with the words ‘pu gabra’, blending Turkic and Syrian languages, which translates as ‘this is the grave of…’. After this, follows the name of the person buried in the grave.” But who these early Chinese Christians were buried in such remote regions, remains unknown. Murre: “it seems that these stones -if they do not come from Olon Sume In Tor- have not been studied in the West…For serious research one would require an expert on this specific Turkic script. Knowing which names were commonly used would help tremendously – although these Christians often also used Syrian names, which complicates matters”.
The extraordinary fusion of languages and the use of both Christian and Central Asian motifs, give an indication of the region’s position along an ancient silk road between the East and West.
Most of the stone crosses recorded and carefully sketched by Miss Lum and her companions have now vanished. At one site, described by Miss Lum as the largest Christian cemetery in the region, all I found were fragments of broken gravestones cemented into the walls of Inner Mongolian farm houses. It is hard to tell however, if these are the gravestones once studied by Miss Lum. Local governments have now also started to collect the stones. The ones I was shown, were often badly damaged during transportation and many of the Christian graves from which the stones came, have been looted. At one 700 year old Christian cemetery, a bulldozer was driven through the graveyard in a hasty and utterly destructive attempt to find some relics and tomb objects.
It is therefore fortunate that the Museum and Art Gallery of the Hong Kong University, preserves one of the most extensive collections of Christian remains from this area. The collection consists of over one hundred bronze crosses from the Ordos region, north of the Great Wall. The crosses are elaborately decorated with swastikas, a motif that goes back almost five thousand years, as seen on an earthenware flask from 2500 BC exhibited in the same museum. The flask is crudely decorated with swastikas that predate Buddhism. Other bronze crosses are shaped like doves, a Christian symbol for the Holy Spirit and in Buddhism a popular image of good fortune. A two-headed bird on one of the crosses reminds one of the double-headed eagle of the Byzantine Empire, one head looking East, the other looking West.
Martin Palmer, author of ‘The Jesus Sutras’ the recently published
book on the Chinese Church of the East and who is also head of the International
Da Qin project, a programme surveying and preserving the eight-century remains
of a church in western China, comments:
“These delicate crosses, survivors of fallen empires and the harshness
of the desert, stand as one of the most moving testimonies to the strength
of the Church of the East in China. It reached out to people for whom nomadic
life was the norm, created felt tent churches and brought from these people
some of the loveliest Christian artifacts ever made.”
The crosses, now on permanent display at the Hong Kong University Museum,
were collected and donated to the museum by Mr. Nixon who was the British
Postal commissioner for northern China, until he was forced to leave the region
in 1949.
Half a century later, large parts of Inner Mongolia are still closed to foreigners, including the city of Olon Sume In Tor. The day I manage to visit this forbidden city, a sandstorm blasts away on the clay remains of the three kilometer-long city walls. Inside the walls, large mounds of bricks and earth give an indication of the massive scale of the buildings and churches which stood here in the period leading up to Kublai Khan’s rule as the first emperor of the Yuan dynasty (1280-1367 AD). Kublai Khan, who also employed Christians at his court, had a mother who was a Christian of the Church of the East, although she patronized many religions. One of Kublai’s daughters was also married to a Christian in what is now Inner Mongolia. It is not known if Kublai or his Christian relatives ever visited Olon Sume In Tor, but they most certainly dealt with the city and its inhabitants.
Marco Polo mentions the city in his travelogue, calling it the city of Tenduc, and western sources of the period at the Vatican in Rome, describe the region as the dominion of a mysterious Christian king in Central Asia.
However, it was a contemporary of Marco Polo, born in Olon Sume In Tor, who would initiate one of the most intriguing encounters between Europe and the heart of the Chinese Empire. At birth he was given the Christian name Markos and when he died in Baghdad, he was known as Mar Yahbalahha III Patriarch of the Church of the East.
Markos was born in 1245 as the fourth son of an Archdeacon of the Ongots, a people from the Ordos region who were among the first to pledge their loyalty to the Mongol leaders invading China. Many of the Ongots also converted to the Church of the East.
Aged fifteen, Markos, who already had become a Christian monk, traveled south from Olon Sume In Tor, to the Fang Shan mountains near modern day Beijing. Here he became the disciple of a renowned Chinese Christian hermit. After his studies, Markos convinced his tutor to set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for which they departed around 1275, the year Marco Polo arrived in the capital of Khan Balek, contemporary Beijing. The two Christian monks travelled west, breaking their journey at Olon Sume In Tor where they were requested to stay by fellow Christians who feared they would not come back. Eventually only one of them would return to Yuan Dynasty China. Pushing on westward from Olon Sume in Tor the two diverted their journey to Baghdad in the Persian Ilkhanate.
Here in 1280, at the astonishingly young age of thirty-five, Markos was appointed Patriarch of the Church of the East in a ceremony attended by Metropolitans coming from distant cities and countries such as Tripoli, Samarkant and Lesser Armenia. Mar Markos, the monk from Olon Sume In Tor, was renamed Mar Yahbalahha III, Patriarch of the East.
As the new Patriarch, Markos requested his former mentor to travel on to Europe. In Europe the pilgrim and envoy was to negotiate an alliance between the rulers of Medieval Europe and the Mongol ruler of China. The travels of this monk who became the first recorded Chinese subject to reach Europe and his remarkable meetings with the Pope in Rome and King Edward I of England, have been told in an earlier article in SCMP.
What followed was a series of amazing initiatives of the European and western worlds. Convinced that a Christian king ruled Central Asia, the Pope and other western rulers of the thirteenth century sent missions to the East to find this Christian ally. None of them succeeded, but the searches for this imaginary Christian king provide for some of the most colorful western travel writing on China and the Mongol empire. Some of these journals and travelogues also give tantalizing clues and insights about cities like Olon Sume In Tor.
One of the missions searching for the Christian king of the East, was headed by a pioneering John of Montecorvino. In 1305 he reported to his Pope that he had managed to convert an Ongot king, named George, who had build a church for his people.
In the late 1930’s, after Miss Lum had safely returned to the Chinese capital, a Japanese expedition excavated Olon Sume In Tor and discovered an elaborate network of foundation walls. The walls are believed to be the remains of King George’s church, mentioned in Montecorvino’s letter. Apart from the gravestones and crosses recorded by Miss Lum, the Japanese archaeologists also found a distinct Gothic leaf motif on several blue-glazed tiles. The whereabouts of these intriguing objects are now a mystery, as is the case with so much heritage of the Chinese Church of the East. Some of the objects found are thought to have been handed back to China after WW II, others are most likely lost. Only one fragment of the tiles with the gothic leaf-design has been preserved and can be seen at the Musee Guimet in Paris.
Author Martin Palmer comments: “It is precisely because this heritage is so rare and so vulnerable that newly discovered crosses and churches are so very important. In China, when the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols collapsed in 1368, so, to a great extent did the Church. As the power of the Khans waned, so did the Church’s. However, I am convinced that across China, further Christian remains exist, but no one has expected to find them, so no one has identified them as Christian. Recent discoveries, such as the crosses of Inner Mongolia, are turning up side down previously held views of the limited degree to which Christianity in ancient China was a major force.”
Seven centuries after they were crafted, these precious remains from the
walled city of Olon Sume In Tor, give us few but evocative hints of what must
have been a fascinating society that felt at ease with both western and eastern
worlds.
South China Morning Post: A tomb raiders treasure
17 June 2001
Tjalling Halbertsma
The farmers carry their shovels past the empty fields to a Liao dynasty grave hill in Inner Mongolia. After a day of work, wooden fragments of coffins, ribs and broken porcelain litter a moon landscape of man made craters and mountains of freshly dug up earth. The ribs are human and the porcelain is Liao and Yuan dynasty pottery. When the pottery is taken away, the bones remain scattered around the open graves.
Two years of ‘black zud’ –extremely cold but dry winters- have decimated the harvests and herds of Inner Mongolia and farmers have turned to other trades to supplement their income. Grave robbing.
The antique dealers in Beijing had already noticed it last summer. The Chinese art market was flooded with Liao dynasty ceramics from as early as the tenth century. The supply of ocher colored flasks, shaped and decorated like the leather water bags that nomads attach to their saddles, and other distinct Liao tri-color bowls suddenly increased dramatically.
It all fitted, the Liao dynasty (917-1125 AD) had its upper capital in Inner Mongolia near contemporary Ba Lin Zhuo Qi and Inner Mongolia was experiencing one of the worst climatic disasters of the last hundred years. The Liao dynasty pottery was of low quality, found in the numerous graves of ordinary and relatively poor Chinese, tombs that are often easily found or are simply known to local villagers who live in the area. Farmers had lost their crops and needed some form of income.
Art dealers also point out that the current scale of grave robbing in Inner Mongolia can only take place with local authorities turning a blind eye for fear of uprisings and protests from a farming community in despair.
That does not mean that farmers only loot graves when crops fail. There is a steady flow of tomb objects from China’s countryside. However, art dealers generally see their supply increase outside the planting and harvesting season -when farmers are not tending their crops- and before winter when the fields freeze. But this year and the year before, what should have been the farmer’s busiest months appeared quite different.
Traveling north of the ancient Liao dynasty capital during planting season, the number of looted tombs and the many farmers openly digging in graves indicated how disastrous the ‘black zud’ had been. And how widespread the looting was. (Foto) Farmers who should have been in their fields walked miles to loot new graves. At some of the gravesites farmers ran away - spades over their shoulders, zigzagging between mounts of fresh earth and jumping over the opened graves - at many sites they returned to resume their digging. (Foto) Fragments of broken skulls, thigh bones and a pelvis brought the message home that these were the tombs of the dead being looted of what should have protected them in the afterlife. (Foto)
Many of the graves had been sifted through more than once and the finds of the day often resulted only in a few Yuan dynasty (1282–1368 AD) coins, displayed on the back of a shovel (foto). In the farmhouses however, Liao dynasty pottery and exquisite carved jade buckles were hidden, prices discussed and quoted. A massive sculpted head was shown, cut from a rare Yuan dynasty marble statue, judged too large for the market. The beheaded body remains buried for a rainy day.
Grave robbing in China has always been lucrative, especially if one managed to locate or stumble upon the grave of a member of the noble families who buried their dead in large tombs filled with a wealth of jade, ceramic tomb guards, gold and silver ware, strings of coins and porcelain.
Professional grave robbers are experts in locating ancient graves based on elaborate library research and a thorough knowledge of terrain and vegetation. After centuries of blizzards and sand storms the earth mounds on top of the tombs often do not stand out in the landscape anymore, but the artificial mounds do leave their marks in the terrain.
Vegetation on graves slightly varies from plants in the surrounding ground as the tomb has changed water drainage. Decomposing body material or wood and the minerals used in paint and pottery stimulate or reduce growth of certain plant species. Expert robbers are familiar with these characteristics and often take soil samples at various depths to determine if they have located a grave and if so whether the tomb has been opened and possibly looted. The practice is a highly skilled one, but also highly illegal and dangerous. Executions of grave robbers or ransom demands for arrested dealers and tomb looters are common in the antiques trade on the mainland.
It is also a trade that has always brought hard currency to China, both before 1949 and thereafter. Tomb objects started to be seriously collected in the west in the late nineteenth century when the first objects were found during the building of railway lines. Today, many of the finds in China are still made at construction sites. Everything outside Beijing’s second ring road for instance, was until recently farmland with tombs and graves dug into the most auspicious land. It is now Beijing’s belt of prime real estate. Extensive modern construction pits and the building of highways through such areas regularly yield graves and tombs and many of the unearthed tomb objects find their way to the antique shops in the nearby Curio City at the third ring road.
High quality tomb guards and other fine objects for the dead still find better markets outside China with western collectors who do not associate the ceramic creatures with the Ten Chinese Hells or a world of hungry ghosts. The objects, often fearsome generals and grotesque human-faced animal creatures, are buried with the dead to protect and guard them against evil spirits, ghosts and intruders. Other objects include provisions for the afterlife such as glazed models of farms and stables, clay pigs or chickens and other necessities.
Killing your grandmother and feeding her to the monks may still be the ultimate sin according to classical texts, but grave robbing comes very close in the courts of the Ten Hell Kings. Many of the farmers in Inner Mongolia still feel uncomfortable with these objects associated with death and the underworld.
Furthermore, China’s tough Cultural Relics laws prohibit the possession of objects found in the earth. Once above the ground the grave objects cannot legally be dealt and must -by the nature of the trade- leave the country. All tomb objects from the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) for instance, come from actual graves, none of the objects were handed down. Much of the porcelain that was handed down for a period of time ultimately ended up in graves and tombs.
Whereas the most valuable finds by professional tomb robbers often leave the mainland to places like Hong Kong, smaller finds travel upwards in tiers from farmer to local strongman, from county to province and ultimately to the galleries of Shanghai and Beijing. In general, gallery dealers who otherwise document their collections, do not buy directly from the country site.
Sadly this means that rare objects are lost to China and to students of Chinese art. For security reasons, art dealers often do not want to know where objects come from and all context of the finds is thus lost. Only the ocher colored glazing and stirrup shape of a pottery water-flask tells us that the object must have come from Inner Mongolia, from a grave of a horseman who was probably under Liao rule. It is particularly sad as these objects come from vanished empires and lost cities at the crossroads of east and west, fascinating sites we do not know a lot about.
As one international dealer explains “I do not want to upset the system of supply and I do not want to know where the object comes from. It is far too dangerous, tomb robbers are not buried in graves and do not die ordinary deaths.”
Digging up the dead and robbing their tombs may haunt the farmers who have lost their crops to the ‘black zud’ in Inner Mongolia, but they do not seem to fear that one day it may be their graves that are dug up as they are no longer buried with the wealth they now dig for.
South China Morning Post: When East found West
14 April 2001
Tjalling Halbertsma
Marco Polo is credited with discovering the East, but there’s mounting evidence to suggest it was a Chinese explorer who found Europe. Tjalling Halbertsma, who researched the trek, reveals his findings.
HE LEFT THE Chinese capital at about the same time Marco Polo arrived in China, and when he disembarked his ship in Naples in 1287, he became the first known Chinese traveller to reach Europe. Having roughly completed Marco Polo’s journey in reverse, he had set out a decade earlier on a journey that would lead him to celebrate Easter with the Pope in Rome and dine with the ‘Emperor of England’. His name was Bar Sauma and, like Marco Polo, he kept a journal.
During his travels, Sauma celebrated Palm Sunday and Easter with the Pope in Rome and also met Edward 1 of England. Martin Palmer, an author who has written about the Church of the East, says: ‘As an Englishman I have been brought up in the cross-cultural adventure of the Italian Marco Polo, but I never heard tell that an even more extraordinary traveller came the other way and met one of the greatest of English kings.
‘That this Chinese monk then celebrated Mass for England’s king is perhaps one of the most astonishing cross-cultural stories of the last 1,000 years.’
The story of Bar Sauma the Practical is a fascinating tale of pilgrimage, diplomacy and exploration. On his remarkable journey from China, Sauma lost his travelling companion to the Church of the East in Baghdad, saw a volcano erupt and was, ‘like Polo’ briefly jailed. But by arriving in the heart of the Vatican, he had missed his destination - he had left China bound for Jerusalem and the Holy Land, as a Christian monk and pilgrim.
It is also a story of a voyage that can now be traced for the first time to its starting point, to a stone near Beijing, covered in Chinese characters and Mongol script and decorated with dragons delicately holding a cross.
Sauma was probably born around 1225 in Mongol China’s great city of Khan Balik, now Beijing. The son of Chinese Christians, his parents called him Sauma meaning ‘Son of the Fast’, indicating that it was likely he was born during Lent. It was to be a prophetic name for a Chinese man who would celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter in Rome.
Christianity had reached Tang dynasty China as early as the seventh century, but was reintroduced to China during the Mongolian rule of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368).
Kublai Khan, who ruled from Khan Balik and surrounded himself with a court of Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, had requested the Polos - Marco’s explorer father and uncle - during their first visit to China, to bring him 100 skilled Christians on their return. They brought Marco instead. Nicknamed ‘Il Millione’ by friends, referring to his tall tales, Marco Polo’s Description Of The World would shape Europe’s image of China, whereas the diary of his Chinese counterpart would largely remain unknown.
Around 1245 Sauma received the tonsure - when part of a monk’s head is shaved - from George, Metropolitan of Peking, and retreated as a monk to the Fang mountains southwest of the city in which he was raised. Having visited the site of the Cross Temple in Fang Shan last year, I now realise its significance. It is here that a stone tablet depicts a Nestorian cross, held and surrounded by dragons, clouds and flames. Although the inscriptions were known to be Christian, the striking image of the cross fused with Chinese iconography had never been published before or, indeed, been linked to Bar Sauma. The tablet now stands in an orchard of peach trees, once the site where a reclusive Sauma studied his scriptures and read about the Holy Land, before setting out to the West with his fellow monk and travel companion Mar Markos.
The chapter in Bar Sauma’s journal describing this momentous decision is aptly titled ‘Sauma and Markos wish to go to Jerusalem’.
Young Markos, a Chinese Christian from Kaoshang in contemporary Inner Mongolia, had convinced Sauma to set out on the journey to Jerusalem and they set off around 1275, the year Marco Polo arrived in Khan Balik. They would never make it to Jerusalem. Instead, Markos got as far as Baghdad and Sauma visited Rome, Genoa, Paris and Bordeaux where he attempted to negotiate an alliance between the Mongol ‘King of Kings’ and the European world. The alliance was to capture Jerusalem from the ruling Muslim Mamluks.
Travelling west from the Fang Mountains, Sauma, now Rabban Sauma - Rabban was an honorific title similar to Mar added to his name later - and Markos passed through regions for centuries associated with death, evil, paradise and barbarians.
Since ancient times, Chinese explorers, scholars and writers had described the world in terms of an internal Chinese empire and an external tributary and barbarian sphere. In this world view the West held a special role as both the most spiritual direction, but also the direction from which barbarian invaders came.
Heading into such hostile territories, Sauma and Markos followed a westward route, which was travelled 14 centuries earlier by Zhang Qian, a Chinese pioneer explorer who covered a distance further than the Greeks had ventured East. His account tells of Western kingdoms and cities such as Persia and Alexandria, places China had no knowledge of before Zhang’s explorations and which would play a crucial role in Sauma’s life.
The first part of Sauma and Markos’ voyage roughly followed Zhang’s route, but unlike Zhang, the two Christians must have travelled with Mongol documents giving Kublai Khan’s approval for their journey. Passing through the Gansu corridor, the Yanguan pass and Yumen Gate, they headed deep into East Turkestan, which Marco Polo had just crossed in the opposite direction.
They eventually reached Baghdad, a Church of the East and a Mongol stronghold, where Sauma was given the title of Visitor-General. In 1280 Markos was renamed Mar Yabbalaha and appointed Patriarch of the East in the presence of other Metropolitans coming from as far as Samarkand, Tripoli and Lesser Armenia, the first Christian state. At the age of 36, Markos had reached the highest position he could obtain within the Church of the East, albeit not in his own country. Sauma’s journal elabora