Houmuwu Ding: A Great Reputation
Hello, my name is Scott Pruett and I’m an anchor with NewsChina. With our podcast, we aim to provide insight into the current trends of modern China allowing you to clearly see what’s happening today through a historical lens.
Today, we’re going to tell some stories concerning the world’s most massive ancient bronze object and the controversy around the name of this magnificent artifact that shows off the supreme bronze craftsmanship of more than 3,000 years ago.
Earlier this year, residents in Beijing noticed a subtle shift taking place in the subway – on signs, the English word “station” has been replaced with “Zhan”, the Chinese pinyin. In some cases, English station names such as Olympic Park and Terminal 2 of the Capital International Airport have become “Aolinpike Gongyuan” and “Er Hao Hangzhanlou”, and thank goodness their English translations are still listed in brackets.
This “pinyinization” campaign has caused a stir online, with many netizens questioning the rationale behind such substitutions, since foreign visitors who don’t speak Chinese are unlikely to understand anything written in pinyin. Some joked that if the intention is to boost Chinese cultural confidence, we shouldn’t use pinyin but rather the most ancient written language which is seen on oracle bones.
A similar discussion occurred when the National Museum of China was renovated and reopened in 2011. Visitors to the museum found that one of its major highlights, which is the heaviest piece of bronzeware to survive from anywhere in the ancient world, had been renamed from Simuwu Ding to Houmuwu Ding.
Now, a Ding is a type of object used in Chinese rituals and important ceremonies to offer sacrifices. It also symbolizes imperial power. More specifically, the Houmuwu Ding is a square-shaped cauldron from the Shang era of more than 3,000 years ago. The upright handles of the Ding are adorned with fish patterns featuring two tigers – eating a human, no less. The rectangular belly is patterned after a ferocious mythical beast called taotie, and you can also make out dragons, clouds, and some lightning.
The Houmuwu Ding was unearthed in 1939 in Yinxu, which translates as “the ruins of Yin”. Yin was the capital of the late Shang Dynasty from 1600 to 1046 BCE. It is now located in Anyang City of central China’s Henan Province. Yinxu is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site and is also one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in China. A large number of royal tombs and palaces, as well as early prototypes of Chinese architecture, have been unearthed in Yinxu.
In the world of academia, there’s a dispute about the name of this national treasure. We adopt the name Houmuwu according to the opinion of experts from the National Museum of China, where the Ding is housed today. We’ll tell you the hidden stories behind this cultural relic by deciphering its name, literally the three Chinese characters Hou, Mu and Wu.
Houmuwu Ding was named so based on the inscriptions in the interior wall of its belly. Inscriptions like this often reveal information about an object. In the Shang Dynasty, inscriptions usually did not exceed 10 characters.
Academic controversy around the name of the Ding centers primarily on the first character, namely, whether it is Si or Hou. In bronze texts, Si and Hou are written the same way, except that one is the mirror image of the other. In the 1950s, acclaimed playwright, historian and archaeologist Guo Moruo first named it Simuwu Ding. He believed that Simuwu meant “sacrificing mother Wu”. Many experts supported the choice, as si was used to indicate sacrifice, which made sense considering it was a ritual object used to offer sacrifices.
However, even at that time, many scholars had proposed that the word si should be interpreted as the word hou, because hou referred to the queen and its meaning is equivalent to “great and respected”. Scholars who supported this claim did so believing that since the Ding was dedicated to a Queen of the Shang Dynasty, hou would be more appropriate.
Though scholars continue to debate the issue of Si and Hou, there has been no controversy on the second character Mu, which means mother – same then as it is today. The word indicates that the owner is not only a woman but also a mother. The Ding was cast by her son to commemorate her. As the casting is exquisite and there were 22 martyr skulls in the tomb where it was unearthed, experts conclude that the recipient of this Ding would likely be the mother of a Shang King. Now we come to the question, who on earth was this mother?
To answer that question, we need to understand that the third character Wu is not the name of the owner, but her designation. The Shang nobles worshiped their ancestors and arranged the appropriate time to conduct sacrifices in accordance with the 10 heavenly stems. And Wu is one of those 10 heavenly stems. According to historical records, three Shang Queens were sacrificed on the day of Wu in Yinxu.
The excavation of another Shang Queen helped to nail down which mother exactly was the owner of the Houmuwu Ding. In 1976, another Ding, the Houmuxin Ding, was unearthed from the tomb of Fu Hao in Yinxu. Fu Hao was the wife of Shang King Wu Ding. The tomb of Fu Hao is the only fully preserved tomb of royal family members of the Shang Dynasty. It is also the only Shang Dynasty tomb for which archaeologists could tell the identity of the owner and the burial date according to the unearthed oracle bone inscriptions.
It was clear that Houmuxin Ding was dedicated to Fu Hao. Xin was the designation of Fu Hao and the heavenly stem applicable to the date she was buried. Since the first two characters of the two Dings are the same, and the format of the two Dings are extremely similar, we can safely reach the conclusion that the recipient of the Houmuwu Ding is Queen Fu Jing, another wife of Shang King Wu Ding.
As the world’s largest and heaviest ancient bronze object, the Houmuwu Ding stands at a height of 133 centimeters; it measures 110 centimeters long and 79 centimeters wide at the opening, and it weighs a whopping 832 kilograms. It represents the highest level of bronze casting technology in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. And to cast such a huge piece of bronzeware, more than 1,000 kilograms of raw material would have been needed. In fact, had it not been such a large and heavy piece, it very likely wouldn’t be currently on display at the National Museum of China.
In 1939 as World War II was cranking up, local villagers found it in some farmland. Upon hearing the news, the Japanese invaders came to the village as if on some treasure hunt. To protect this rare cultural relic from being hauled off by the Japanese, the Wu Family, who had discovered it, contacted cultural relic dealers in an attempt to transfer it to a safe place. But it was simply too big and heavy, so they gave up. Local farmers then decided to cut it into 10 pieces for transport. Hours later, however, only one handle of the Ding had been separated. They ended up reburying it in another location and finally unearthed it again after the war.
In October 1946, the Houmuwu Ding was transported to Nanjing and sent as a gift to the then President Chiang Kai-shek for his 60th birthday. He was very happy about it and even took a picture with it. In 1949, when the Kuomintang lost the civil war and retreated to Taiwan, Chiang tried to transfer it to Taiwan together with other cultural relics. But in the end, he had to give up on that, and he left it at the Nanjing Airport because it was simply too darn heavy for the plane. It was later discovered by the People’s Liberation Army and preserved at the Nanjing Museum. Ten years later in 1959, it was transferred to Beijing and later put on exhibition at the National Museum of China.
Dings were originally used among primitive Chinese societies as cooking utensils. They were made of clay initially, but as metallurgy emerged and developed, bronze was used by the end of the Shang Dynasty some 3,000 years ago. By that time, Dings had become sacrificial objects symbolizing the power and wealth of the owner, and later, the ding was considered a symbol of the nation.
There are also quite a few Chinese idioms that feature the word Ding. As it had that association as a national emblem, some idioms used Ding as a non-specific reference to the government. But there are also some less political idioms. For example, a commonly used one is “Yi Yan Jiu Ding”, which translates to “one word is equivalent to nine sacred Dings”; this expression is used to make a solemn promise. Another common one is “Da Ming Ding Ding” – as famous as a Ding, meaning the person has a great reputation. Now, Da Ming Ding Ding may sound a bit lighthearted in English, but as you now know, a Ding is not light at all and it carries great honor and significance to the owner.
As for the Houmuwu Ding, it is far and away the most treasured piece at the National Museum of China and an unquestioned treasure of the nation. So, be sure not to miss it next time you visit Beijing. Until then, you can check it out online along with countless other artifacts at the website for the National Museum of China.
Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score compose Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Song Yimin, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.