The ROM’s exhibition gives rise to an extensive lecture series featuring an international slate of speakers
The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), from June 26 to December 2010, is highlighted by an outstanding line up of lectures delivered by world renowned speakers. The exhibition’s engagement offers a unique opportunity to examine the evolution of China in its rise to a world power, Eastern philosophies that have been in existence for ages and numerous other themes. The series’ 14 lectures take place at the ROM throughout the exhibition’s engagement.
Confirmed speakers and topics in the series include:
Thursday, June 24
Building Up and Digging Down: New Archaeological Evidence for Construction of the Tomb Complex of the First Emperor
Dr. Chen Shen, Bishop White Chair of East Asian Archaeology
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
The tomb complex of the First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, is the largest burial structure in China. While historical texts describe how it was built and by whom, is this information reliable? Since the 1974 discovery of terracotta army pits near the Lishan tomb complex near today’s Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, ongoing archaeological investigations have revealed information unknown from the historical records, providing new insights into the construction of this sophisticated tomb complex.
Dr. Chen Shen, the ROM’s Bishop White Chair of East Asian Archaeology, is responsible for the development of The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army. With the ROM since 1997, Dr. Shen has done extensive fieldwork in palaeolithic archaeology in China, taught in the University of Toronto’s East Asian Studies Department, and has worked on the ROM’s pre-Han Chinese collections and galleries. As a special member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. Shen currently is the only scientist from a foreign institute to work with Chinese archaeologists on the celebrated Zhoukoudian Peking Man re-excavation project.
Tuesday, July 6
Love and War in the Making of the Chinese Empire
Robin D.S. Yates, James McGill Professor of History and East Asian Studies
McGill University, Montreal
The unification of China in 221 BC and the creation of the Chinese empire by the First Emperor, Shihuangdi, of the state of Qin is one of the most significant achievements in world history. In 1975, two major archaeological excavations provided key evidence regarding the complex factors that led to this accomplishment. A huge pottery army of warriors and horses was discovered to be protecting the First Emperor’s tomb outside Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, and Qin legal documents were retrieved from the tomb of a low-ranking Qin official who was buried in 217 BC in Hubei province. While the spectacular pottery army is famous around the world, the fascinating legal documents are only known by specialists. However, it was largely on the basis of its administrative, organizational, and legal advances that the Qin was able to defeat its enemies and unify China.
Robin D.S. Yates is a specialist in Chinese history focusing on science and technology, law, and women. He trained at Oxford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, where he gained his PhD in 1980. He is former Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies and Director of the Centre for East Asian Research, McGill University and is currently Chair of the International Society for the Study of Early China and editor of its journal, Early China. Dr. Yates is completing a multi-year collaborative research project translating and analyzing the Qin and early Han legal texts discovered at Zhangjiashan, Hubei.
Tuesday, September 21
Newest Sources of Early Chinese History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels Recently Discovered
Edward L. Shaughnessy, Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor of Early China, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
The great Chinese economic expansion of recent decades and the resulting construction boom have brought about two noteworthy consequences for early Chinese history: numerous ancient tombs and other archaeological sites have been disturbed and a domestic market in antiquities has developed. These factors have led to the appearance of numerous ancient bronze vessels, many bearing historically significant inscriptions. This talk investigates the most important of these artifacts.
Edward L. Shaughnessy, the author of numerous books and articles in both English and Chinese, specializes in the textual traditions of the Chinese Bronze Age.
Friday, September 24
Before the Empire: New Light from Early Qin Archaeology
Li Feng, Associate Professor of Early Chinese History and Archaeology, Dept of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Columbia University, New York City
The Qin Empire did not develop overnight. This talk explores the recent progress of early Qin archaeology and the implications for the rise of the Qin Empire. Starting as a small polity in the deep mountains on the fringe of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Qin had achieved considerable territorial gains in the 7th to 5th centuries BC, following a historical move into central Shaanxi. With further consolidation of state and bureaucracy, competing with other powers in eastern China, Qin had built the middle Wei River valley as the firm base for the future empire.
Li Feng, a field archaeologist, is an expert of ancient Chinese bronzes and bronze inscription. He is the author of Landscape and Power in Early China (2006), Bureaucracy and the State in Early China(2008), and co-editor of Writing and Literacy in Early China (in press).
Tuesday, September 28
Art, War and the Afterlife: What Survives the Great Cataclysms and Why?
Gary Geddes, British Columbia’s Lieutenant-Governor’s Award winner for Literary Excellence
The survival of the terracotta warriors and the famous 12th-century Chinese scroll painting, Qingming Shanghe Tu, is not only astonishing, but also raises important questions about the role of the artist as a record keeper and interpreter. In this talk, Gary Geddes reads and discusses his works, The Terracotta Army and Swimming Ginger in an illustrated presentation, establishing that the role of art is to make history strange, to make us see the past, and ourselves, in a new light.
Gary Geddes is the author and editor of more than forty books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, translation and anthologies and is the recipient of a dozen national and international literary awards. Swimming Ginger and an exciting reprint of The Terracotta Army are two in a long list of his books immersed in Chinese and Asian culture.
Tuesday, October 19
State Power and Sovereignty: The Success of the First Emperor
Dr. Roberto Ciarla, Far East curator
National Museum of Oriental Art, Rome
Based on archaeological evidence, this talk follows the almost 800-year path that the Qin polity pursued to reach full imperial power. It also examines how the political program of the First Emperor strictly adhered to Han Fei’s ideas on state power and sovereignty.
Dr. Roberto Ciarla is a specialist in Far Eastern pre- and proto-historic archaeology, and has directed and participated in numerous archaeological excavations and research projects in Asia. Since 1982 he has been the curator of the Far East section at the National Museum of Oriental Art in Rome and since 1987 he has served as the director of the Thai-Italian Lopburi Regional Archaeological Project. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient. Dr. Ciarla has published extensively on the archaeology and art of China and of Southeast Asia.
Thursday, October 21 (NOTE: This lecture is delivered in Mandarin with English translation)
Visualizing the Underground World as Conceived by the First Emperor: Archaeological Implications
Dr. Duan Qingpo, Professor of Archaeology
Northwest University, Xi’an, China
Archaeological investigations over the last two decades have revealed that the terracotta army is just a small component of an underground world envisioned by the First Emperor. It is suggested that Qin Shihuangdi built China’s largest tomb complex to re-create a world system that he wished to continue from the real world he had unified and brought under his control. As the Qin empire was overthrown within a mere 15 years after the unification, understanding his world system is difficult. However, with new evidence, archaeologists are beginning to be able to visualize his underground world as it probably was conceived by the First Emperor himself.
Dr. Duan Qingpo has been the chief archaeologist investigating the First Emperor's tomb complex over the last twenty years. His archaeological team has been responsible for the recent major archaeological discoveries at this site, including the stone armour pit, the civil official pit, the acrobat pit, and many others. Dr. Duan proposed the theory that the tomb complex was constructed in accordance with the Emperor’s revolutionary desire to build an underground world as a duplicate of the actual political system he established, effectively changing our understanding of the First Emperor’s view of the afterlife. Currently, Dr. Qingpo is leading a multi-year research project on China’s Great Wall.
New Light On Xanadu
John Man, Historian
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately pleasure dome decree.” So begins Coleridge’s famed fantasy-poem. But Xanadu was and is a real place— the khan’s summer palace and his secondary capital, where Marco Polo arrived in 1275. Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson, conquered all of China. By traveling in Marco’s footsteps, John Man brings Xanadu to life, reconstructs the dome and theorizes about its purpose.
John Man is a British historian with a special interest in Mongolia and north China, where he has travelled extensively. Books on Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and Kublai Khan were followed by The Terracotta Army and The Great Wall. Man’s latest book is Xanadu: Marco Polo and Europe's Discovery of the East.
Thursday, November 4
The Garden of Curious Things:
Science and Technology in China at the Time of the Terracotta Warriors
Rick Guisso, Professor, Department of East Asian Studies
University of China
From crossbows to chromium, from beer to blast furnaces, from lacquer to silk, from acupuncture to elixirs of immortality, and from walls to canals, China was the world’s most technologically advanced civilization at the time of the First Emperor. What lay behind this explosion of creativity? And how long would its fruits remain China’s secret?
Professor Rick Guisso has taught the history of pre-modern China in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of China for more than 30 years, serving two terms as Department Chair. Among his publications is The First Emperor of China (1989).
Thursday, November 11
Use and Abuse: The Qin Dynasty in Later Histories
Michael Nylan, author, professor
According to the conventional narrative of today, the Qin was regarded as a harsh tyrannical rule destined to collapse. Its successor, the Han, founded by a commoner instead of a king, was determined to do everything differently than the Qin, including being kinder to its subjects. The Han was intent upon valuing the gentler, kinder Middle Way associated with Confucius instead of the Qin-favoured Legalism. For that reason, the conventional narrative insists, the Han army not only prevailed against the remaining Qin supporters, but also went on to rule through two stable dynasties—the Western Han (206 BC-AD 8) and the "restored" Eastern Han (AD 25-220), for 400 years altogether. This presentation demonstrates that every part of this early 20th-century narrative has been misinterpreted by patriots espousing diametrically opposed visions of the distant past.
Professor Michael Nylan is the author of seven books about Confucian Classics and the archaeology and history of China’s classical era (4th century BC to the 4th century AD). She has written 50 articles, several of which have been translated into Chinese, Japanese and French, on the politics of pleasure theory in early China, gender history, and center-periphery relations. Professor Nylan is currently working on two books, the first on pleasure theory from the 4th century BC through the 10th century AD and the second on the late Western Han capital of Chang'an.
Wednesday November 17
China’s Ancient Green Revolution
Gary Crawford, Archaeologist
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Mississauga
China has contributed hundreds of crops and important economic plants to the world economy. Among them, rice and millet came into the human fold nearly 10,000 years ago and eventually came to support the economy of Emperor Qin Shi-Huang. What archaeologists are learning about this early “green revolution” in China is a story of ecological and technological ingenuity that challenges modern archaeology.
Gary Crawford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is an archaeologist specializing in environmental issues and the origins of agriculture. He has participated in archaeological research in Japan since 1974 and in China since 1986. Crawford has published widely, is co-author of Human Evolution and Prehistory, and hosted and co-authored the TV Ontario series Archaeology from the Ground Up in the late 1980s. He is currently investigating the origins and intensification of agriculture in China.
Thursday, November 25
From Terracotta Army to Jade Suits: A Golden Age in Chinese History
Carol Michaelson, Chinese Art curator
The British Museum
Some of the most striking and evocative artistic and archaeological objects ever found in China date from the Qin and Han dynasties, which spanned four centuries from 221 BC to AD 220. This period marks the beginning of the Chinese empire which was to endure until 1911 and is one of the defining, golden ages of Chinese history.
Carol Michaelson is a curator of Chinese art in the British Museum, now part-time, having worked there for 18 years. She also works for Sir Joseph Hotung, one of that Museum’s great benefactors, and is helping to curate an exhibition on Qin and Han material at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, opening in August 2010.
Thursday, December 2
Battle for an Empire
Dr. Graham Sanders, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Studies
University of Toronto
After two brothers-in-arms, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, defeated the despotic Qin regime, they found themselves locked in a fatal struggle to shape the future of a new empire. Vivid historical, fictional and poetic accounts capture the tale of how one of China’s greatest dynasties, the Han, rose from the ashes of the Qin.
Dr. Graham Sanders’ most recent book, Words Well Put, examines how poetry was used as a persuasive form of discourse in political, social and romantic contexts over 1,500 years of Chinese history.
Thursday, December 9
Writing Fiction About China as a Foreigner
David Rotenberg, Artistic Director
The Professional Actors Lab, Toronto
David Rotenberg directed the first Canadian play in the People's Republic of China—The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (in Mandarin) in 1994. He was fortunate to be doing so as China was engaged in its pursue of modernization. That extraordinary transition (unlike any that the world has ever seen) has been the source of Rotenberg’s first eight novels, and the subject of this lecture.
Born and raised in Toronto, David Rotenberg has spent much of his career as a theatre director in New York City. Currently the Artistic Director of Canada's most important actor training centre, The Professional Actors Lab, he has published five Zhong Fong Mystery novels, as well as Shanghai, The Ivory Compact, a three-volume historical fiction.
All lectures take place in the ROM’s Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre at 7:00 pm.
Tickets are now available:
Price per lecture: $28; ROM Members and students $25
Choose any 4 lectures for $84; ROM Members and students $75
All 14 lectures: $252; ROM Members and students $225
To register for lectures go to www.rom.on.ca/terracottaarmy or call 416.586.5797