Ming dynasty exhibition puts spotlight on China's golden age
British Museum collection reveals rulers' often uneasy relationship with the provinces
As people in Hong Kong protest the decisions of the central government in faraway Beijing, a new exhibition in the British Museum in London shows, through several hundred carefully chosen treasures, that for China, managing its remoter regions is an age old issue.
This blockbuster, titled Ming: 50 Years that Changed China demonstrates how, in the first 50 years of the 15th century, the early Ming emperors approached this perennial issue of ruling provinces, and how they tried to resolve it through shows of luxury and careful PR.
The first Ming emperor, Hongwu, had 26 sons and decided to send 24 of them to rule the regions.
Recent excavations from three of these princes' tombs (most of whose treasures have never before been seen outside China) proved what had long been suspected, but not confirmed: that everything those sons wore, built, read, drank from and paraded were designed to look as if they were important and in control. And to give the people a sense that somehow they were in the centre of things, even if they were far away.
"He used the link of blood relationships to consolidate his leadership," says project curator Luk Yu-ping. The princes' role was partly to protect and partly to represent the emperor, she says.
"They were like a screen. In Chinese the word is fan wang, which combines the sense of a protective guard and a display of imperial aura."