Hao Yexing is a "post-95" staff member at the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center of the Old Summer Palace Management Office in Haidian District. He is the "treasure keeper" of the Old Summer Palace and has restored 5 pieces of porcelain so far. One of the largest cultural relics that he personally participated in the restoration was the blue and white lotus embroidery mound, which took half a month to complete 132 fragments of the "puzzle", allowing the glory lost in the years to be reborn in the modern era. He is also a "treasure chaser" of cultural relics in the Old Summer Palace, running around the demolition areas around the Old Summer Palace all year round, and a brick, a stone, and a pillar base may be a cultural relic. He shouldered the responsibility of history and let the diaspora "come home".
Dazzling "pre-stitching" of porcelain fragments
Hao Yexing is an authentic Beijinger, who likes to visit the Forbidden City and visit Shoubo when he is a child, and is a complete "cultural relics fan". He likes to collect news from major museums in the newspaper, and whenever a new exhibition is launched, he will come to the scene as soon as possible to "get a sneak peek". In his eyes, cultural relics are witnesses of history and carry the splendid civilization of the Chinese nation. "History is distant and mysterious, and that's what makes it so beautiful that it constantly inspires my intellectual curiosity."
When he was admitted to university, Hao Yexing decisively filled in the major of cultural relics and museums, and studied archaeology with his tutor. After 4 years of systematic study, after graduation, Hao Yexing entered the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center of the Old Summer Palace Management Office as he wished. In addition to being excited, he was determined to apply what he had learned and protect the Old Summer Palace as a "treasure house of oriental culture and art" with practical actions. Soon after joining the company, he came across the most systematic and large-scale cultural relics protection and restoration project in the Old Summer Palace in recent years - "Restoration 1860".
Once known as "the epitome of all gardening art", this "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens" not only has stunning and majestic architecture, but also houses a large collection of precious cultural relics. "In 1860, the Anglo-French army ransacked the Old Summer Palace and took away all the items that could be taken away from the garden at that time, such as porcelain, which was relatively large and difficult to carry. In the eyes of many people, only ruins remain in the Old Summer Palace today, but in fact, there are many unknown ruins and cultural relics buried under the Old Summer Palace. Hao Yexing said that since the 90s of last century, the Old Summer Palace has continuously promoted archaeological work, and a large number of cultural relics have been unearthed in the site, including porcelain, glass, stone components and so on. However, none of the porcelain excavated in the Old Summer Palace is complete, and there are currently more than 10,<> pieces of porcelain fragments.
The Old Summer Palace "Restoration 1860" project mainly aims to restore these more than 10,<> pieces of porcelain fragments, so that the broken cultural relics can be completely reproduced in front of the public. Each piece of porcelain is a "witness" of history, and with a reverence for history, Hao Yexing began to restore the first real historical relic in his life - the blue and white lotus embroidery mound.
"That's 132 pieces!" After labeling the porcelain fragments one by one, Hao Yexing took a long breath. He checked the information, and the embroidery mound was very large, nearly half a meter high and about 40 centimeters in diameter before it was broken, but the fragments in front of him were very small, some as big as a fingernail. When Hao Yexing participated in the restoration, the fragments had already been selected and sorted out from tens of thousands of porcelain pieces, and even so, it was not easy to return the 132 fragments to their original positions.
"To be honest, when I first came into contact, I was very blind!" Hao Yexing said that when he was in college, he studied the process of porcelain restoration and knew the tools he might use, but this was all on paper and he had never used it. Facing a broken porcelain piece, Hao Yexing felt that he had no way to start.
The restoration expert saw Hao Yexing's helplessness, so he guided him hand-in-hand. The first step is to put together the pieces that can be determined and close to each other according to the ornamentation, arc, and crack shape of the fragments, and glue them with paper tape, a process called "pre-splicing". Hao Yexing sat down on the ground and took out a fragment from the pile of porcelain fragments and carefully compared it with the fragment in his hand. If the pattern doesn't match, choose another one..."The difficulty is more difficult than the puzzle!" After a long time, you will feel dazzled, and the "pre-stitching" of porcelain fragments is very abrasive. Hao Yexing said.
Because of the long-term touch of porcelain fragments, the fingers of this "post-95" young man are already a little rough, and sometimes scratched, but once a few adjacent porcelain fragments are found, these little pains are nothing compared to the excitement.
After continuous comparison, repeated attempts, and 4 days of work, Hao Yexing and the department members finally pieced together the respective outlines of the upper and lower parts of the embroidery pier.
Use "ingenuity" to interpret "turning decay into magic"
The "pre-stitching" of the fragments is just the beginning of the porcelain restoration work.
"The debris is buried in the soil for a long time, and a thick layer of rust will be attached to the broken stubble, which must be cleaned." Hao Yexing first applied a layer of alcohol solution to the stubble, gripped the scalpel in his right hand, and carefully clicked the blade a little to scrape off the rust. Some of the fragments are small and very difficult to handle, and if you are not careful, you will cut your fingers. Once each piece has been cleaned up, it can be bonded together with reagents.
Then, another puzzle ensued. The embroidery pier spliced the upper and lower parts, but the middle part was very missing, and Hao Yexing once thought that the upper and lower parts of this artifact could not be connected. With extreme patience and the guidance of restoration experts, the restoration team finally found the connection point between the upper and lower parts and determined the height of the embroidery pier.
The missing parts are supplemented with resin, gypsum and other materials, and then through a series of processes such as leveling, coloring, painting and decoration, glazing, etc., the finished product of blue and white lotus embroidery mound repair is displayed in front of everyone. The arduous restoration process allowed Hao Yexing to experience first-hand the difficulties of cultural relics restoration workers.
At the same time, a heavy history is also in front of us. "It's not just the restoration of a cultural relics, it's a process of cultural restoration." Hao Yexing said that cultural relics, as an important part of cultural heritage, are the precious spiritual wealth of mankind, and the "restoration" of cultural relics restoration and the "restoration" of cultural rejuvenation are the same word, and the restoration of cultural relics is also the embodiment of cultural rejuvenation.
Since the launch of the "Restoration 1860" project, the restorers of the Old Summer Palace have restored the imprint of civilization with their hands, interpreted "turning decay into magic" with "ingenuity", and reproduced the parts of the long river of Chinese civilization that had been interrupted in the history of more than 5,<> years, so that the glory lost in the years was reborn in the modern era. To date, Hao Yexing has restored a total of <> cultural relics, and the blue-and-white lotus embroidery mound is the largest and is now on display at the Zhengjue Temple in the Old Summer Palace. Hao Yexing hopes that every restoration of cultural relics can be an inspiration, so that the Chinese people can build cultural self-confidence and national self-confidence, and make cultural relics come alive.
Preserving "mutilated beauty" is also a heritage heritage
However, not every restoration of artifacts succeeds.
The Old Summer Palace once excavated an arrangement of cloud dragon patterns. It is not only a special shape, but also one of the few artifacts in the Old Summer Palace during the Daoguang period, which has great historical and artistic value. Therefore, the restoration team especially wanted to restore it completely. Unfortunately, despite searching the inventory, it was not possible to find enough fragments, let alone reliable historical sources and photographic references to judge the original appearance of the arrangements. "We don't know exactly how many holes there are in the upper half of the arrangement, and the lack of critical fragments makes the repair task difficult to complete." Hao Yexing said that based on the principle of respecting history and the authenticity of cultural relics restoration, the cultural relics restoration team finally decided to keep it in its original state.
"The value of cultural relics lies not only in restoration, but also in inheritance, and sometimes preserving the 'incomplete beauty' of cultural relics is what makes cultural relics truly alive." Hao Yexing said that this is the consensus of everyone in the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Center of the Old Summer Palace Management Office.
As a staff member of the Cultural Heritage Research Center, he participated in all 5 phases of the "Restoration 1860" project. In practice, he has continuously exercised his thinking ability and hands-on ability, continuously expanded his vision, improved his knowledge system, learned to match, polish, color, glaze and other links, and has been able to independently and completely restore a piece of porcelain.
After the completion of the restoration of cultural relics in 2021, Hao Yexing exerted his subjective initiative, consulted relevant materials, carefully sorted out the previous restoration process and problems encountered, and completed the "Research Report on the Protection and Restoration Project of the Old Summer Palace Cultural Relics" with colleagues, which put forward constructive suggestions for the future restoration of cultural relics in the Old Summer Palace.
Hao Yexing hopes to restore more cultural relics in the Old Summer Palace in the future. "There is a site in the central area of the Old Summer Palace called 'Shewei City', which is a city-style temple complex in the Old Summer Palace, surrounded by thick and solid walls, with tall gate towers built on the city gates, and a moat surrounded by east, west and north, which is a place dedicated to Buddha statues. During the Qing Dynasty's time in the Old Summer Palace, the emperor would go to the Acropolis to worship the Buddha every first and fifteenth day of the first year. Hao Yexing said that today, only the rammed earth cores of the three walls and some of the city bricks remain. So far, only 4 pieces of porcelain related to Buddhism have been restored from the Old Summer Palace, 2 are blue-and-white Sanskrit high-foot bowls and 2 are blue-and-white Sanskrit plates. "Because this kind of porcelain has a special shape and special ornamentation, it is more difficult and more challenging to repair. So far, I have not touched the restoration of this type of porcelain, but I am very interested and look forward to the opportunity to do so in the future. ”
"Treasure chaser" makes diaspora cultural relics "home"
Hao Yexing not only repaired cultural relics in the Old Summer Palace, but also was a "treasure hunter" of cultural relics. In the past 5 years of work, he has participated in the recycling of diasporic cultural relics many times, so that more cultural relics of the Old Summer Palace can "go home".
Since the establishment of the Old Summer Palace Management Office in Haidian District in the early 80s of last century, the search for diasporic cultural relics has been carried out continuously, with investigation and collection, registration and active consultation with the units that have retained the diaspora, and the Old Summer Palace Management Office has always made every effort to promote the return of lost cultural relics. Since 2015, the Old Summer Palace Management Office has also set up a special cultural relics recycling working group to carry out "salvage" recovery of cultural relics that have been used in residential buildings or buried in foundations for historical reasons.
On the north and south walls of the Old Summer Palace Ruins Park, there are two "Great Walls of Cultural Relics". The whole strip of stone is laid out in turn, and irregular green bricks and tiger skin stones are piled up into a half-meter-high stone wall, which are all diasporic relics recovered from the Old Summer Palace in recent years.
How did the relics of the Old Summer Palace spread to the people? According to reports, the eunuchs who once guarded the Old Summer Palace neglected management and even stole from themselves, resulting in the loss of a large number of cultural relics. Among them, a large number of precious stones were transported and scattered by officials, profiteers and later warlords. In the late Qing Dynasty, some people who did not have a fixed residence moved into the Old Summer Palace to live, built houses from local materials, specially selected stones, tiger skin stones, and green bricks to use, and the strips and green bricks that supported Haiyan Hall and Yuanyingguan were pried away. In the areas around the Old Summer Palace, such as Fuyuanmen, Yimu Garden, Shuimo, and Erhekai, many old houses have scattered cultural relics from the Old Summer Palace.
In recent years, Haidian District has accelerated the construction of the "Three Mountains and Five Gardens" historical and cultural scenic spots, and the surrounding areas of the Old Summer Palace have been demolished and relocated one after another. As soon as they heard that there was a village demolition nearby, Hao Yexing and his colleagues rushed to visit. When busy, he spends nearly half of the year running around, looking for the "treasure" of the Old Summer Palace.
In October 2021, demolition began in the Fuyuanmen community located in the southeast corner of the Old Summer Palace, which was named after the former site of Fuyuanmen in the Old Summer Palace Park. "Listening to the teachers in the garden and the surrounding old residents, there are old objects of the Old Summer Palace in this community. During the six months of demolition, except for weekends, we would go to the demolition site almost every day to 'dig for treasure'. Hao Yexing said.
At first, Hao and his colleagues carefully searched for visible bricks and stones on the surface, but as the demolition work progressed, many plots had been bulldozed, and many stones were buried in the ground, and Hao Yexing would "dig three feet into the ground". Many of the artifacts were covered with muck a meter or two thick, and they even dug up strips of stone from up to 4 meters deep into the ground. Considering that large-scale excavation machinery would destroy cultural relics, Hao and his colleagues used traditional manual methods, using shovels, hammers, pickaxes, crowbars, and ropes, to cut out the cultural relics of the Old Summer Palace buried deep in the foundation and transport them back to the Old Summer Palace.
After more than 100 years of wandering, he returned to his hometown. The smooth return of diasporic cultural relics has always been inseparable from the unremitting efforts of the "treasure hunters" of the Old Summer Palace. Over the past few years, Hao Yexing and his colleagues have recovered tens of thousands of precious cultural relics such as stamped bricks, carved components, and drum stones from these demolition areas.
In May last year, after a heavy rain, bricks and stones fell off the perimeter wall near the gate of the Changchun Palace in the Old Summer Palace, and the staff repaired the old bricks from recycling, giving the diaspora a new life.
Text/Reporter Wang Bin