Arts and design

The excursion to the Nanjing museum
On the 7th of the March 15, 2009 in the afternoon, Sam Genesis and I visited the Nanjing museum; it is located at the southern foot of the ravishing Purple Mountain, inside Zhongshan Gate, near Qingxi River. The whole area is 33482m2. We chose to go there because that is a comprehensive museum of art and history; from it we can know more exact information of the change of culture, art, technology, history of my country.

The whole museum is very big and commodious, and it is separated by two floors with several parts, like the ancient Chinese jade exhibition, Chinese ancient gold and silver wares hall, ancient Chinese lacquer hall, Chinese brocade and embroidery hall, folk art, ancient Chinese porcelain room, and the ancient Chinese painting hall. Firstly we visited modern art sculpture, at the entrance of gate; I saw some pair of latest artifacts, like the sculpture of the cattle, which were made of pines. Manger told me use the pine as the materials can make it endure in air for a longer time. Furthermore this year is the year of cattle. In Chinese tradition, cattle are the emblem of the prosperity, power, and luck. They think make the sculpture of cattle could be very prevalent in the year of cattle. Through the whole art work, I thought that is an excellent work, through the texture, it looks very smooth, and exudes the solemn temperament of cattle. From the details of it, that is quite vivid, and picturesque。 At that time few of us could resist to temptation to touch it. In the whole modern exhibition, nearly all the statues were about cattle, but they represented the different kind of work, some were made into lamp, some were made into made into decoration, some are used for storing the food. Suffice to say, cattle has become a “hotshot” in people’ mind.

Later we visited the ancient artwork, most of them made of jade, gold, sliver, jewel. But one truly attracted me was a pair of bell set. It was made in warring states period, about two thousand ago, it was made of copper. Inevitably, that is used for making the music. I highly appreciated it not because its rare materials, instead I was impressed by its ways for using. Before I read the guide book, I even can’t imagine copper could use for making the music, each bell has the different size, structure。When people knock them each of them they will emit the specific tone, voice. When you knocked then consecutively in size order, a magic music will impress your heart! I like this pair of bell set best, meanwhile I got the vicarious thrill because I thought how intelligent，great our ancestors were! They used the mediocre material but made an immortal art work! Then we also saw some other preeminent work like: Double-fish-shaped vase in three colors, sliver-threaded jade suit, gold beast, gold cicada on the jade leaf etc.Through this traveling, I was deeply impressed, and felt the whole art work is the crystal of people’ intelligence, creativity. I thought if all of us think more, create more, probably centuries later the world will be ripple with the Edison.