Inspiration Across Time: Tracing the soul of Chinese material culture

From bronze vessels and lacquerware to goldware and ceramics, Chinese material culture has carried ideas, rituals and aesthetics across thousands of years. That exchange between past and present sparked fresh conversations at "Inspiration Across Time," a special panel discussion and workshops hosted by CGTN at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum.

The event is part of China Crafted, the latest season of the CGTN Art Series, which uses documentaries, animations and immersive exhibitions to bring classical Chinese art and cultural heritage to global audiences.

Moderated by CGTN’s international correspondent Miro Lu, the panel brought together Dr. Hwang Yin, adjunct senior lecturer at the Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore; Mathew Welch, president of the Southeast Asian Ceramic Society (SEACS); and Gong Pan Pan, researcher, designer and founder of HFG Atelier (Hanfugirl).

From ritual to art

The panel opened with the Shang Dynasty(1600-1046 BC), where bronze and jade were tied to ritual and power long before they were admired as art. Fu Hao, one of the earliest documented female generals in Chinese history, offered a vivid entry point. Her tomb held hundreds of jade objects and many bronze vessels.

Dr. Hwang said that the starting point for understanding Shang material culture is not how an object looks, but how it was made and what it was for.

"In our present age, we may just look at it in terms of its aesthetics," she said. But in its own time, bronze vessels belonged to a ritual system. Their making also demanded piece-mold casting, an intricate technique in which the bronze emerged from its mold as a single, complete form. The method was so demanding that it fell out of use for centuries.

The panel then traced the significance of jade across Chinese history.

Jade "went through a few phases," Gong said, tracing its long evolution. In the Neolithic, it was a ritual object. By the Shang era, it had become a symbol of the ruling class. Later on, it came to stand for the virtue of a gentleman. That final meaning, Gong noted, is one that often surprises those outside the culture. Elsewhere jade is prized mainly for its beauty and worn as adornment, "but hardly with value and virtue," the way it came to be understood in China.

A life beyond death

The discussion traveled forward to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) and the world of Mawangdui, a set of tombs near present-day Changsha whose most famous occupant was the 2nd century BC noblewoman Lady Dai. If the Shang used their objects to speak to heaven, the Han used theirs to furnish a whole life beyond death.

For Dr. Hwang, the most significant finds were two funeral banners, which she called "a first inkling of what painting may be like." They mapped a clear cosmology of the underworld, the living world and heaven.

Other Mawangdui finds included lacquerware, a 48-gram silk gown and a wellness chart, revealing a life beyond death imagined in remarkable detail. Welch said that they marked a shift from ritual objects to “luxury, status items.”

The refined lacquerware of the early Han was a Chinese innovation, but it did not stay in one place. It moved into Korea, where artisans developed mother-of-pearl inlay, and Japan, where craftsmen developed gold-flecked maki-e, before flowing back into China. “It was a back and forth movement,” Welch added.

But the exchange of ideas really reached unprecedented heights during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

A cosmopolitan golden age

If the Han looked inward to eternity, the Tang opened outward to the world. Its aesthetic was grand, opulent and unmistakably cosmopolitan, with many of its most iconic works shaped by flourishing trade, cultural exchange and influences from across Eurasia.

The clearest example sat one floor above the auditorium where the panel was being held. Known as the Belitung Shipwreck, or the Tang Shipwreck, it was for Welch one of the great windows into the period.

"Shipwrecks are wonderful time capsules," he said, "and ceramics, in particular, because, unlike organic material, they don't deteriorate." The vessel itself was not Chinese; its crew would have been Persian, Arab and Malay, moving along routes that linked China, Southeast Asia and the Abbasid world.

It went down around 830 AD, carrying some 60,000 objects, more than 50,000 of them mass-produced Changsha wares. "This shows the extraordinary mass manufacturing capabilities of China in the 9th century," Welch said. It also carried luxury goods, including finer Yue teawares, some made for the Persian market.

A world of quiet elegance

From Tang's splendor, the conversation then took a striking aesthetic turn towards the Song Dynasty (960-1279), where bright colors and luxury gave way to quiet elegance.

Welch traced a shift in philosophy. While the Tang had favored gold, bright colors and Buddhist splendor, the Song looked back to Confucianism and the teachings of the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi, moving away, as he put it, toward restraint, simplicity and subtlety. In the so-called five famous wares of the Song, he noted, the emphasis fell not on color but on form, glaze and elegance.

Gong noted that the practice of grinding tea into fine powder took shape during the Song era, when water-powered mills made mass production possible. The practice later spread to Japan with Buddhism, becoming an ancestor of what we know as matcha.

The custom of drinking tea as a form of cultivation, Dr. Hwang added, had begun in the late Tang and deepened in the Song, alongside the ceramics made to serve it.

An experience for the senses

Beyond the panel, two small workshops gave visitors a close encounter with traditions discussed during the afternoon.

At one table, tea practitioner Kenny Leong guided guests through Song-style tea culture and demonstrated how powdered tea was whisked with water into a froth. He said the main idea he wanted visitors to take away was that the custom of drinking whisked tea, now widely associated with matcha, is Chinese in origin.

At the second workshop, Dr. Li Fupeng, founder of Dr. Incense and a researcher at Nanyang Technological University, introduced visitors to incense seal making. Before incense sticks became common, he explained, powdered incense was shaped into long, winding patterns that burned slowly and evenly, letting people enjoy fragrance while marking the passage of time.

The workshops were warmly received by attendees, who said the hands-on experience made the traditions feel personal.