Prosperity Restored

An ancient-style architectural complex enables people to time travel to a commercial center more than 1,000 years ago

By ZAN JIFANG

Just before noon, more and more people poured into the temple fair held at the Tang West Market, a group of ancient-style buildings in Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. It was the Lantern Festival, the conclusion of the 15-day Chinese Lunar New Year celebration and the end of the temple fair, making it the fair’s most festive day.

Temple fairs are a traditional way for the Chinese to celebrate their Lunar New Year, which fell on February 3 this year.Considered one of the largest in China, the Tang West Market Temple Fair attracted about 100,000 persons every day for a fortnight. Walking through streets adorned with various lanterns and other festival ornaments, visitors found themselves surrounded by traditional art, folk performance, as well as tasty local snacks.

“The temple fair here is fantastic. It adds more festive flavor to our Spring Festival holiday,” said Hang Zhijie, a local visitor.“Sugar fi gure-making, shadow plays and stilt walking remind us of our nation’s many traditions.”

Hang is among many in Xi’an who like the Tang West Market, not only because it is home to an excellent temple fair, but also because it recreates an ancient market of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when Xi’an, then named Chang’an, was the capital of China.

Silk Road

In ancient times, the Silk Road was an important trade route across the Asian continent, connecting Eastern, Southern and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world,including Northern Africa and Europe. After the route was created in the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 9), trade between China and Central Asia and Europe rapidly increased. Chinese products, especially silk, were transported along this route to the West, thus giving it the name “Silk Road.”

After several centuries, the Silk Road extended to Korea and Japan in the east and to Italy and Egypt in the west, becoming a bridge for political, economic and cultural exchange between the East and the West.

Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China,India, Egypt and Persia (now Iran).

Splendor

Covering more than 300,000 square meters, the magnificent Tang West Market architectural complex is located on the site of a thriving Chang’an market 1,300 years ago.The ancient market, called West Market, was three times the size of today’s Tang West Market. Its temple fair was also one of the best in China at that time.

Tang Dynasty Chang’an was home to two major markets. The East Market was mainly patronized by members of the imperial family and aristocrats. The West Market,on the other hand, catered to ordinary people and was famous for foreign trade.

Lu Jianzhong, Board Chairman of Xi’an Tang West Market Culture Industry Investment Co. Ltd.

Tang Dynasty was a prosperous era. With a population of more than 1 million, Chang’an was one of the largest cities in the world. As the political, economic and cultural center of China, Chang’an was foreigners’ favorite place.Those foreigners generally came from countries along the Silk Road, an ancient overland trade route linking Asia and Europe. Many of them brought goods from their own countries to Chang’an to be traded in the West Market, thus boosting commerce in the market. Many of the foreign merchants traded in jewelry, silk, tea, herbs and medicine.

According to archaeological discoveries,the ancient market was neatly divided into nine parts. In addition to places for foreign and local vendors to offer their goods, the market also housed restaurants, liquor stores, hotels and banks.

Trade ties between Chang’an and the countries along the Silk Road also facilitated cultural and artistic exchanges. For example,during the Tang Dynasty, music and dance from Western countries were very popular in Chang’an.It was also very common to see the locals in Chang’an wearing Western-style clothing and vice versa.

PRECIOUS RELIC:A Tang Dynasty artifact depicting a foreign merchant riding a camel is displayed in the Tang West Market Museum

ANCIENT-STYLE ARCHITECTURE:Buildings modeled on Tang Dynasty architecture are part of the Tang West Market

CHILDREN PERFORMERS:A traditional folk performance is staged at the temple fair of the Tang West Market during the Spring Festival holiday in early February

HISTORY AND ART:Images of a Silk Road caravan adorn a modern work of art close to the Tang West Market Museum

UNDERSTANDING HISTORY:Visitors view relics excavated from the site of the ancient West Market at the Tang West Market Museum. The relics are preserved intact under a glass floor

The Silk Road first developed during the Western Han Dynasty(202 B.C.-A.D. 9). But economic and cultural ties between China and other countries along the trade route reached their peak during the Tang Dynasty. For this reason, Chang’an was widely considered the eastern end of the Silk Road, with the West Market serving as the major locus for Chang’an’s booming foreign trade activities.

In 2006, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China noted the ancient West Market was representative of the trade along the Silk Road during the Sui(581-618) and Tang dynasties. Recently, the site of the West Market was added to the list of representative sites of the Silk Road. China, along with five Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan—have jointly applied to have these sites inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Preservation

The site of the original West Market was the site of archaeological excavations conducted twice in the 1950s and 1960s.Due to technical limitations, no attempts were made to preserve or rebuild the ancient buildings or conduct further archaeological research at the time.

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Wang Bin, Curator of the Tang West Market Museum

The latest excavation of the site was conducted in 2006,when an expert team led by An Jiayao, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was invited to lead the research at a site that a company planned to do real estate development. After three months of research, archaeologists found many rare relics of the Tang Dynasty at the site, such as a small stone bridge, a waterway,tracks of wagon wheels, tools used in workshops and Tang Dynasty coins.

Understanding the archaeological signi fi cance of the site, the developer,Xi’an Tang West Market Culture Industry Investment Co. Ltd., decided to give up its former plan to build a 50,000-squaremeter business facility. To better preserve the site, the company invested 320 million yuan ($47.76 million) to build a museum to preserve the site and exhibit artifacts found there.

“Modern houses can be built tomorrow,but protecting historic sites and the cultural heritage left by our ancestors should be done today,” Lu Jianzhong, Board Chairman of Xi’an Tang West Market Culture Industry Investment Co. Ltd., told Beijing Review.

It was the first time a private company invested in a museum in China to preserve a historic site, thus showing the entrepreneur’s strong sense of social responsibility.Formerly, preservation of historic sites in China was solely the province of governmental bodies. Little private capital flowed into such investment, since there were no foreseeable economic returns.

The museum, called the Tang West Market Museum, covers more than 13,000 square meters. The company invited archaeological experts to supervise the preservation of relics and the creation of exhibits, as well as work related to the research and operation of the museum.

“Relic preservation at our museum meets national standards. We employ professional archaeological personnel to participate in this work, in order to ensure the preservation of the relics,” said Wang Bin, Curator of the Tang West Market Museum and former Deputy Curator of the Shaanxi History Museum.

“We have a collection of about 20,000 cultural relics. A large portion of the exhibits in the museum are relics found at the site, which have all been registered with the government’s cultural relics department.The findings from the site are ranked as national-level cultural relics and belong to the country. Our museum is just in charge of exhibiting them to the public,” the senior historian said.

The unique aspect of the museum is how it displays the original state of the site.The site preservation area, which is about 2,500 square meters, features a thick glass floor. Walking on the glass floor, visitors can clearly see the wagon wheel tracks,waterway, bridge and bricks of the West Market during its golden era, more than 1,000 years ago.

Besides archaeological findings, the museum also exhibits related displays from collectors and introduces local art and folk customs of Xi’an. It presents a broad picture of the city’s history, culture and society, both past and present.

Since the museum opened on April 7,2010, it has aroused increasing attention from the public, and the number of visitors even reached 1,800 a day, said Wang. “It was really a big number for a private museum.”

Revival

But creating this museum was not easy for Lu and his company. Cherishing a dream of restoring the historical West Market, he persuaded two business partners to withdraw from the original real estate project on the site of the ancient West Market. To accomplish this, Lu had to pay these companies two times their original investment.

With an investment of 4.5 billion yuan ($671.64 million), development of the Tang West Market, a grand project to partially rebuild the West Market on its former site, started in 2001. In addition to the museum, the architectural complex also includes exhibition halls, a performing center, an antique market, an exhibition hall for intangible cultural heritage items of Shaanxi Province, a shopping center, a high-class business club and a special street for displaying arts and goods from other countries along the Silk Road.

“Most parts of the complex are open to the public. We are now working on the construction of the street for foreign arts and goods, which will be another highlight of the Tang West Market,” said Lu.

According to Lu, when the street is fully completed, it will be an important exhibition center for architecture from other Silk Road countries and will also serve as a center for trading various foodstuffs and goods from those countries. “Walking along the street,Chinese visitors can appreciate the cultural essence of other Silk Road countries without having to go there,” he said.

“We will invite people from those countries to operate shops in the street and hope more foreign friends will come here to learn more about the city and make their own fortunes here,” said Lu. “Such commercial and cultural exchange between Chinese and foreign people was done more than 1,000 years ago, and it will fl ourish again today.” ■

Xi’an

Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, is known for its rich historical and cultural resources. Called Chang’an in the past, the city was the capital for 13 Chinese dynasties. The most prosperous dynasties in China’s history—Zhou (11th century-256 B.C.), Qin (221-206 B.C.), Han (202 B.C.-A.D. 220) and Tang (618-907) dynasties—all chose the city as their capital. For this reason, Xi’an enjoys fame as a “history museum.”

The world famous Terracotta Warriors and Horses, a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Emperor Qinshihuang (259-210 B.C.), was found 37 km from the city. Other important historical sites include the City Wall, built on outline of the city during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the 64.5-meter Big Wild Goose Pagoda built in 652, and the Huaqing Hot Spring. The Shaanxi History Museum displays Shaanxi’s history and culture, as well as China’s ancient civilization.

Today, Xi’an, with a population around 8.4 million, is the fi nancial, technological and transportation center of northwest China.