The sky stays a friendly postcard blue until late afternoon when wispy clouds veil the sun. I tighten my wool hat. Within days, the first snow of the season will blanket Northwest China. In the failing light I start up a zigzag flight of stairs on a modest hill in Leitei (pronounced Lay-tie) Park in Wuwei city. At the summit is a temple filled with statues of the Taoist God of Thunder and his followers. The figures glare out fiercely, but in the wrong direction. They should look downward.
Two thousand years ago, laborers burrowed into the bottom of this hill. In later centuries, worshippers and clergy came and went, prayed, and burnt incense in the temples. All the while, a Han Dynasty tomb slept quietly beneath their feet – until 1969, when a group of local farmers arrived to dig an air-raid shelter.
Many of the relics found on that hill, as well as other places in this city, are displayed in Wuwei’s municipal museum. The autumn sun shone brightly the day before when I climbed the stairs to its entrance. Called Liangzhou in ancient times, Wuwei was an important east-west crossroads on the Silk Road. It has a rich history.
The museum’s archaeology section is arranged by era from prehistoric times onward. One exhibit shows the grave of a leader from around 4,100 B.C. to 3,700 B.C. His body is covered by round jade disks with holes in their center. The disks are too large and too old to be coins, but their shape and name intrigues me: bi. This is a homonym, or sound-alike, for part of the modern word renminbi, which means “the People’s Money.” In the case of the precious jade bi, the word refers to heaven, and the hole allows the deceased’s spirit to pass through it. The linguistic connection is coincidental but curious.
My genial guide for the day, Lu Longmei, points at a map. It shows that the Great Wall stretched for 194 miles, or 310 kilometers, in this part of Gansu Province. We are near the western limit of ancient Chinese civilization.
When Liu Bang, the first Han Dynasty emperor, was crowned in 206 B.C., he ordered many social reforms. One example is a group of edicts unearthed in a Wuwei tomb. Written in ink on wood tablets, these order government officials to honor elders and provide pensions and support for widows, widowers, and the disabled. Even loneliness was to be addressed.
Pensions could be in the form of grain. The currency of the time was primarily bronze cash coins, or qián (pronounced chee-on), round disks with square holes in their center. Around 220,000,000 bronze coins and a very limited quantity of gold ingots were cast – not struck – annually during this period. A standardized form of money encouraged trade between cities and boosted the empire’s prosperity and might.
Incidentally, a modern tribute to Liu Bang is on a 1986 100 Yuan coin struck at the Shenyang Mint. The coin contains 1/3 ounce of .916-pure, or 22-carat gold, and is 23 millimeters in diameter. According to the Standard Catalog of Gold & Silver Coins of China, only 4,980 were minted rather than the 25,000 authorized. Liu is shown mounted on a horse, leading his troops into battle.
It is fitting that the coin shows a horse with the emperor. In the Wuwei Museum, a few steps away from the wood tablets, is a wood horse. This model steed stiffly stands around 20 inches tall. Found inside a Liangzhou burial site, it was carved between 202 A.D. and 220 A.D. Miss Lu comments that the model exemplifies the ideal horse of that time with its “small ears to indicate keen hearing, big eyes for very good vital capacity, large nostrils that reflect its spirit and large hooves for good stability. There is a saying about this type of horse, “In the daytime it can run 1000 li, or 500 km, and in the night it can run 800 li.”
Miss Lu adds, “At this time, the key factor for victory or defeat in a war was the quantity and quality of the forces’ horses. In ancient times, many people were tasked with helping the emperor find good horses.”
A few feet from the wood stallion is another horse, this one an elegant green-toned bronze sculpture. The original (now in the Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou, the province’s capital), 38 other bronze horses, and a couple of hundred other relics were found in the tomb below the God of Thunder’s temple. For a famous piece of art, it measures a modest 14 inches in height.
It is Wuwei’s greatest claim to fame today. Sometimes called The Flying Horse of Gansu, or Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow, this had a well-known meaning within the culture of the time. Miss Lu explains, “The swallow is known as a very fast bird. This horse runs so swiftly that it has caught up to the swallow and steps on it.”
There is a famous phrase about this legendary horse by an outstanding Han Dynasty astronomer, statesman, and man of letters, Zhang Heng. He once described such a horse as a “Sky Horse Dragon Sparrow.” This means that the sky horse is walking in the sky when the wind god dragon sparrow looked back and was surprised.
The importance of this heavenly horse of bronze was quickly recognized. "As a statue made 2,000 years ago, it's amazing how it was so carefully balanced. You can see all the weight is supported by the thin right-rear leg. Experiments have shown that it could only have been made after finding the exact center of gravity,” commented an archaeologist.
The Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow is the national symbol for Chinese Tourism today. Large statues of it stand in cities from Guangzhou to Beijing and, of course, in Gansu Province’s provincial capital Lanzhou where the original now resides. Small replicas are sold everywhere from airports to gift shops around the world, and the icon appears on countless brochures. Numismatically, it is the theme of several Chinese medals. The importance of the Flying Horse was quickly recognized both numismatically and culturally.
The first medal struck with the Flying Horse image may be a 24.1-gram brass medal that is 38 millimeters in diameter. The date on it is 1969, the year of the statue’s discovery and apparently the year it was minted. Inscribed on it is Zhang Heng’s poetic phrase, Sky Horse Dragon Sparrow.
The earliest well-known international medal with the Flying Horse of Gansu on it was minted in England in 1973 by the Toye, Kenning and Spencer company. Two thousand silver medals were struck. These commemorate the “Chinese Exhibition 1973-1974” at the Royal Academy in London.
Five years later, a gold Flying Horse of Gansu medal was struck in China for the 1978 Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People’s Republic of China held in Hong Kong. The exhibition catalog cover features a photo of the Flying Horse, and this show contributed to growing Western awareness of the bronze stallion. The reverse side displays a design reminiscent of a traditional Chinese mirror. This medal remains very popular and sought after.
On the more modest side, there is a Flying Horse of Gansu tourism medal in base metal with no date on it. It promotes visits to China in four languages: German, English, French, and Chinese. The Great Wall of China is on the opposite side of the medal.
The Flying Horse of Gansu is very much on my mind the next day. Daylight is fading as my friend D. and I arrive at Leitai Park. Tourist season ended months ago, and there are no other visitors. We hurry to the entrance to the tomb and temple. These are separated from the rest of the park, and a guard is reluctant to admit us. However, D. is persuasive, and we both pass through the turnstile.
D. stays outside to take a phone call as I walk through an arched opening in the hillside. Inside is a well-lit hall with walls and ceilings lined by dark gray bricks. These are reinforced by modern steel scaffolding and netting to stop stray fragments from bonking a visitor on the head. The room is maybe 25 meters long. Along the walls on both sides of the passageway are posters. These detail the tomb’s history in both Chinese and English. For instance, one explains that its ancient bricks can support almost twice as much weight as modern bricks can. The process by which these “super” bricks were manufactured has been lost through time.
The posters also reveal that it’s unknown exactly who was buried here. His family name was Zhang, but there is no further information. It is clear, though, that he was a Han Dynasty military leader of importance.
Another poster is devoted to the more than 21,125 coins that were found inside the tomb. These include 15 Ban Liang coins, a type instituted by the Qin Dynasty and classified here as from the Western Han Dynasty. Then there were 93 minted between 9 A.D. and 25 A.D., a 16-year period after which Han Dynasty rule was restored. The vast majority of the coins, 21,017, are called Wu Zhu. These are from either the Eastern Han Dynasty or Western Han Dynasty. Two posters illustrate the designs on the various types of Wu Zhu coins.
Near the end of the room are a pair of carved stone turtles, symbols of Heaven and Earth. Beyond these, a low, arched exit leads to a short hallway. Above this, stonework in the shape of a three-portal imperial gate decorates the wall. There is also a red sign that warns visitors to duck their heads, and I do.
The opening ushers the way into an empty, bleakly lit room with a column in its center. At its far end another arched outlet is visible. This passage is so low that I have to get down on hands and knees to crawl through it. On the other side is another dimly lit, gray brick-lined room. There are two side chambers, one of which displays pottery.
At the far end of this room is yet another arched portal. This one has the lowest clearance of all. I push my daypack ahead along the ground and worm my way through. This innermost room has two side chambers that aren’t nearly tall enough to stand upright in. Both chambers are secured by iron gates and filled with bronze copies of the horses and figures found here in 1969. Leading the herd is the Flying Horse of Gansu.
The ground around the bronzes is littered with modern paper money. There is a belief that what is thrown into this ancient site will return in larger quantity. So, 2,000 years after a general was buried with thousands of coins to take to Heaven with him, he is getting reinforcements!
Underground among dark stone walls and iron gates, I suddenly have an inkling of the hopelessness a condemned prisoner must have felt. I crawl back out of the tomb as quickly as possible, glad, nonetheless, to have seen the Sky Horse Dragon Sparrow’s original home. The evening air of Liangzhou District, Wuwei City, Gansu Province, People’s Republic of China, is cold, almost frigid, but it’s a relief to be outside in it.
Speaking of Sky Horse Dragon Sparrow, the legacy of Zhang Heng illustrates how ancient and modern intertwine in China. Zhang. who lived from 78 A.D. to 139 A.D., is the subject of a modern silver commemorative coin. The 22-gram, .900-fine proof silver coin was struck in 1986 at the Shanghai Mint. While the official authorized mintage is 30,000, only 9,675 were produced.
Zhang is remembered mostly as an astronomer and for two books he wrote about China. In astronomy, he developed a theory of an egg-shaped universe in which Earth is suspended like the yolk.
The 1986 coin focuses on another side of his genius: it illustrates Zhang Heng in front of one of his inventions, the world’s first seismic detection instrument. It is shaped like a barrel that dispenses wine through eight dragon-shaped spouts that run down the sides. Each dragon holds a small ball in its jaws. Below each dragon is a toad with an open mouth. If even a small earthquake occurs, a pendulum suspended inside will swing and hit the side of the barrel. This sets in motion a series of levers and releases a ball held by a dragon that then drops onto a toad. This shows the direction that the earthquake comes from while the number of balls released indicates the temblor’s strength.
A scale model of this device is on display in the Geological Museum of China in Beijing. It is also one part of the Ancient Chinese Inventions and Discoveries coin series released in 1992. This series was conceived by Martin Weiss, an American coin dealer who at one time was the largest seller of Panda coins in the world.
In 2015, Mr. Weiss recalled, “In Hong Kong, I was waiting for my flight, and I went to the airport bookstore. There I found a book The Inventions and Discoveries of China. When I opened the book, I said, “This will make a great coin series about China.” There were several inventions in it. And in the bibliography there were the original sources.” That’s how the Inventions and Discoveries series that was minted between 1992 and 1996 began. Zhang Heng’s seismograph is featured on six of the 1992 The Inventions and Discoveries of China coins.
As a leading city during the Han Dynasty, perhaps one of these devices was installed in Liangzhou/Wuwei? The city has had its share of earthquakes, but that’s a story for another day.