Jointly launched by the Tianjin Museum and the Xinjiang Museum, The Treasures of the Silk Road in Xinjiang exhibition opened at the Tianjin Museum on January 17, 2024.
The exhibition is organized in three parts, namely “Prelude to the Silk Road”, “Magnificent Echoes of the Silk Road” and “Buddhist Influences on the Silk Road”, and features 136 exquisite pieces (sets) of cultural relics, including 20 pieces (sets) of grade-one objects. The diverse range of exhibits include bronzes, painted pottery basin, gold wares, woolen textiles, documents, Buddhist murals and everyday items, with the “Five Stars Rise in the East, benefiting China” brocade armband (replica), painted camel rider figurines, and the brocade pillow in the shape of a twin-headed bird among featured exhibits. They recount the history of interactions, exchanges and integration between different ethnic groups along the Silk Road.
Located to the north of the Kunlun Mountains, Xinjiang has been a major hub on the ancient Silk Road, and a place of convergence for many ethnic groups, religions and cultures since ancient times. Its unique cultural heritage has left an enduring impression and nurtured the exotic legends of China’s Western Regions.
The Central Plains and Western Regions of China has had close ties as far back as the pre-Qin period. Xinjiang entered the Bronze Age in approx. 2000 BCE and the Iron Age in approx. 1000 BCE. Archaeological excavations and researches from this period showed that Xinjiang’s unique social and cultural customs have both local characteristics from the Western Regions, and influences from surrounding areas. As different ethnic groups migrated, congregated, interacted and integrated, their interactions and cultural exchanges fostered the dissemination and development of production technologies, which became a key factor in the formation and development of a unified multi-ethnic nation, and heralded the emergence of the Silk Road.
The exhibition is open until April 21, 2024.
Sources: Tianjin Museum, Xinhua News