Tang: Treasures from the Silk Road capital

If you wanted to brush up on your knowledge of China’s Golden Age, the Tang Dynasty, you could do worse than regressing to a 1970s childhood. Grab the beanbags and binge on the campy Japanese kids’ TV show, Monkey.

Let’s leave aside that the lead character, Monkey, is a celestial monkey warrior and king of primates who’d conjure up an army from a few plucked chest hairs, ride a white cloud and could transform himself into a hornet to irritate and defeat evil: the TV program is rooted in fact.

Monkey is based on the 16th-century Chinese epic Xi You Ji (Journey to the West), which traces the 17-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang from China to India, in search of Buddhist scriptures. In Monkey, which was dubbed hilariously into English, the monk is called Tripitaka, an honorary title used during the Tang Dynasty for those who had mastered the Buddhist scriptures.

Mind you, in the Japanese TV production, the revered monk was also played by a willowy bald lady – the female actor was said to bear a closer resemblance to the monk than any of the male actors auditioning for the part. Tripitaka was accompanied on his journey to India with a group of protectors, animal spirits all atoning for past sins, and all drawn from the Chinese zodiac: there was Horse, Pigsy, Sandy (a water dragon or buffalo) and, of course, macho Monkey, ‘the funkiest monkey that ever popped,’ as went the catchy title song.

The real-life hero, Xuanzang, lived from 602–664 AD, at the blooming of the Tang Dynasty, which stretched three centuries from 618-907 AD. The idea he was an effete weakling is disputed by Yin Cao, curator of Chinese art at the Art Gallery of NSW, who says the monk would have been a strong, resourceful man, capable of spending months on lonely roads through some of the world’s most hostile landscapes. He dodged bandits while crossing the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan and Pakistan, buried himself in sand to escape the heat of the searing deserts of Central Asia and sailed down the Ganges into the heart of India, returning home after nearly two decades of elevated learning and adventure, to be feted by scholars, kings and emperors.

Xuanzang set off on his epic adventures from the capital of the Tang Dynasty, Chang’an. Today, you’d find Chang’an on the map as Xi’an, outpost of western China best known in the West as the home of the Terracotta Army of earthenware soldiers and horses buried with China’s First Emperor, Qin.

At Chang’an’s heyday, Europe’s premier cities were yet to be great (or many even yet to be founded), mere clusters dank forts and animal pens. In comparison, Chang’an was a cosmopolitan metropolis of nearly a million people, ruled by emperors considered the sons of heaven. The city’s layout, structured on the Chinese cosmological tradition and principles of fengshui, was dominated by the Palace City and the Imperial City: it was a skyline of palaces, pagodas, temples, markets, monasteries, encircled by city walls and three great city gates, to the east, west and south.

Gilded bronze dragons, mirrors inlaid with mother-of-pearl and turquoise, earthenware sets of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, ornate baskets wrought from silver and the faces of the Buddha, rendered in marble and stone are the legacy left from this rich era.

Chang’an’s wealth came from its strategic location: the city was the starting point of the great medieval trade routes, the Silk Road. Not only did the roads bring gold, silk and other exotic wares, but it was also traversed by ideas, cultural traditions and religions, including Buddhism.

Driven by a desire to discover the true words of Buddha, Xuanzang followed the Silk Road’s many arms in his quest for knowledge, eventually bringing 1335 volumes of sutras to the royal courts of Chang’an, earning a place in Chinese history for his erudite passion.

The monk Xuanzang is still part of the conversation in China today – he has been likened to morning dew or a pearl for his purity, described as the spine of Chinese nationality, the type of man who comes along only every thousand years – a millennial man, if you will. He’s there in operas, in literature, in ideas.

Yet Xuanzang is more than just a talking point, he’s also part of the landscape, literally. A towering bronze statue of the monk sits on the city’s main ancient thoroughfare. With his traveller’s staff in hand, the tiers of the Great Wild Goose Pagoda rise up behind the statue. Here, the venerated monk conducted his translations, which were then stored in the same pagoda, one of the few buildings that remain from the Tang dynasty.

But while many buildings may have been destroyed and the caves are declining into fragility, many precious objects of gold, silver, ceramic and glass, as well as elaborate mural paintings have been carefully preserved and guarded, and are currently on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s latest exhibition. Tang: treasures from the Silk Road capital proves that the Golden Age still shines, and the legend of the scholar monk and his celestial companions lives on, into the Year of the Monkey.

Tang: treasures from the Silk Road capital is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW from 9 April – 10 July, see here.