China News Service, Beijing, February 8 (Reporter Lang Lang) Knocking open the hardened loess layer and peeling off the raw soil piece by piece with a hand shovel, Tomb No. 90 of the Dongshan Village site about 5,800 years ago has seen the sunshine of the 21st century.
Every item in front of you, including the skeleton, is a historical relic when taken individually.
Gong Liang was not a witness to the archaeological site, but as the dean, he was happiest about what was behind the site.
The burial relationship between people and objects, and the meaning of different burial areas in large tombs and small tombs, show that more than 5,000 years ago, there was a wealth surplus and class division in the land where Chinese civilization was born. "This is the 'first glimmer' of Chinese civilization."
From being a teacher of archeology at Nanjing University, to director of Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, to director of Nanjing Museum, until his retirement, he was obsessed with clarifying the relationship between people, objects and time, leading to historical reunions over the millennium: "Archaeology is the The record of relationships, looking at a museum, is looking at the world’s past, and looking at the world’s thousands of words.”
Look up at the clouds, it will rain tomorrow
On the small TV, a 1977 archeology student from Peking University was doing an internship, carrying a camera and doing archaeological surveys in fields around the country.
Gong Liang, who had just finished the college entrance examination and was about to fill out the application form, looked at the smallest TV in the village and thought that the archeology major was very interesting, but it was far away from real life and very mysterious.
He will be attracted to mysterious things.
When he was a child, in the village of Guizhuang in Taicang, Suzhou, Jiangsu, his father took him to read "Folk Proverbs for Measuring the Sky". "There are clouds in the sky and rain on the ground." Will it rain tomorrow? The next day while he was working, he looked up at the sky and saw that it was really raining! After I was busy, I used a few grains of sugar to tease the ants and see how they walked in a straight line.
He discovered that many phenomena in nature, including humans, are closely related and endless. The clouds in the sky, the rain on the ground, the rice in the hand, this is the first relationship that he has sorted out through observation and practice. The hidden connection makes him feel very magical.
In an era when knowledge was scarce, as long as there was something with words, Gong Liang's figure must be in front of it: posters on the wall, subtitles of movies played in the village, Zhu Bolu's "Motto for Managing a Family", "Farmland Water Conservancy Infrastructure" in the textbook, He secretly read "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness" and "The One Hundred and Eight Generals" in "Water Margin", and he knew them by heart - words established his relationship with the world.
While studying, he gets up early and goes to work at night with adults. Gong Liang, 15 years old, weighs 37 kilograms on his high school graduation report. In fact, before going to Nanjing University to study archeology, he didn’t know much about this major. After studying it, he discovered that “archeology is a channel of communication with distant ancestors, which is very meaningful.”
For example, the "Land of Fish and Rice" that Jiangsu people are proud of is proved through archaeological evidence: at the Shunshanji site in Suqian, which has a history of about 8,000 years, archaeological discoveries found cultivated rice and fishing tools.
In 1986, he followed his mentor Jiang Zanchu, who was known as "touched every stone in Nanjing", to sort out the Beidongshan Han Tomb. The extremely rare scale of the tomb made this excavation rated as one of the "top ten archaeological discoveries in the country" that year: the entire tomb was The red cinnabar, the air is moist and thin, and the "annex building" alone covers an area of more than 300 square meters, with 4 rooms, 11 rooms and 18 rooms. Living facilities include everything from dining to entertainment, from washing to toilets, as well as figurines, singing and dancing instruments, and banquet supplies.
Later generations saw his life through the "death" of his predecessors. The owner of the tomb tried to move the wealth and royal power underground and enjoy it forever. In the end, the tomb became a cultural imprint, mirroring the civilization of a dynasty.
"Archaeology is not about digging for treasures, it is about finding the relationship between the artifacts." Gong Liang is still obsessed with seeing and discovering other information conveyed by the artifacts: "By digging things in the same stratum, you can see the living conditions at that time. Without this If there is no relationship, the things inside will be worthless and meaningless.”
Sometimes, tracing a person's past is a bit like exploring the origin of civilization. Often, many subtle details stumble, and fate and history turn. But such fate and encounters do exist in the world.
The picture shows Gong Liang. Photo courtesy: Nanjing Museum.
Rebuilding history, buying oranges at the station
"Relationship" - this is the end of almost every question he answers. When I met Gong Liang waiting at the backstage of the Jiangsu Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala, he was wearing a dark purple Chinese-style jacket with gray hair. He was smiling all the time, with arched eyebrows, and talked about his relationship with Nanjing Museum (referred to as "Nanbo").
Before becoming the director of the Nanjing Museum, Gong Liang taught archeology and ancient Chinese architecture at Nanjing University. He stayed at the archaeological site for more than ten years. The whole family was squeezed into a small house of 18 square meters. After the family went to bed every night, ancient architectural drawings were spread out. The floor, tables, chairs and benches were all over the place. When he was nervous, he would lie on them and stay up all night writing and drawing. Later, he went to the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture to protect and repair cultural relics buildings. In addition to completing the main work, he often wrote papers and often stayed up until 2 in the morning. ,3 points.
In December 2005, the organization took a fancy to his professional background in archeology and cultural relics protection and management, and 44-year-old Gong Liang became the candidate for the director of Nanjing Museum. In the summer of 2006, just over half a year after taking office, he was faced with the task of presiding over the second phase of the Nanjing Museum renovation project.
After more than half a year of research, he discovered that at that time, the Nanjing Museum had a collection of 420,000 items with a complex structure. Even the main hall on the top of the verandah, imitating the Liao and Song Dynasties, was a cultural relic. Some exhibits have extremely high historical and cultural value and their importance should be highlighted. As a result, the special exhibition hall was included in the second phase of the project expansion agenda.
The concept of "benefiting people's livelihood during cultural relic protection" that Gong Liang has always emphasized in his important positions such as Director of the Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau and Deputy Director of the Department of Culture has been put into practice in this project.
He and his colleagues discussed and deliberated over and over again, and finally decided to follow the three ideas of "people-friendly and interesting", "protection of intangible cultural heritage" and "reflecting the characteristics of the Republic of China" to establish a digital museum, an intangible cultural heritage museum and a museum of the Republic of China. Nanjing Museum has "six museums in one hospital" "The pattern was formally formed.
In 2013, the second phase of the Nanbo reconstruction and expansion project was officially completed and opened to the public. In the old teahouse of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Center, an excerpt of a play is performed every day. Each audience member has to spend ten yuan to buy a pot of tea. "It is not to earn the audience ten yuan. If you don't drink tea while listening to the play, you are not an old man." The teahouse, the singers, the actors and the people drinking tea, these process scenes are all exhibitions, and they are also of the most important significance.”
With the personal qualification of cultural relics protection exploration and design from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and more than ten years of experience in the protection and maintenance of ancient buildings, he designed the Republic of China Pavilion into the "best version" of Nanjing's Republic of China streets.
Every building can be found in the streets of Nanjing. All the traditional Chinese medicine shops, cheongsam shops, powder shops, silver buildings, etc. on the old streets of the Republic of China are all decorated in the 1930s style. Old-fashioned store signs, advertising posters, rotary telephones, rusty postmarks, including the classic car you see when you enter the door - all movable things in the Republic of China Museum are old items collected from the Republic of China, and all the restored details are I searched for photos and documents from that time.
It's not enough. He doesn't want a quiet "wax museum". He wants noisy, shouting, pedestrians coming and going, and a "living" old street of the Republic of China.
The picture shows the interior of the Republic of China Pavilion of Nanjing Museum. Photo by reporter Lang Lang
You can walk into every building with neon lights and look down from the overpass on the second floor to see the bustling crowds. Shopkeepers and waiters dressed in Republic of China-style costumes are greeting customers, and the vinyl records in the cafe are spinning the gentleness of "Tuberose"; outside the train station, beside the linen pockets, a vendor wearing a felt hat and blue cloth is selling oranges, which is warm. The yellow light cast a sentence in the open space beside it: "I'm going to buy some oranges. You stay here, don't move around." - Almost everyone passing by will smile heartily: "Ah, it's Zhu Ziqing's "Back View" "!" Then buy a few oranges, walk into the station, and imagine a father climbing the platform next to the black steam locomotive that will never leave again.
At this moment, everyone watching the exhibition brings their own life history, walking through the tram tracks on the concrete floor, and briefly living in the way of the Republic of China. Their feet are connected to time and space, and become the exhibition's theme. part.
Thousands of years ago, Su Shi was leaning on his bed and asked: "Who are you sitting with?" He replied: "I am the bright moon and the clear breeze."
There is a scene in the eye, there are people in the scene, and the beautiful artistic conception created by the relationship has infiltrated the Chinese people's life aesthetics from ancient times to the present.
Standing today, thinking about the past and imagining the future, the past and the future intersect at will today, so both the past and the future are blowing the wind of the present.
At such a moment, a person would want to stand up and speak to the times, history, and the universe.
The picture shows the Republic of China Pavilion of Nanjing Museum. Photo courtesy: Nanjing Museum
To become the dean, you must do three things for Nanbo
In the exhibition hall, everyone was infected by the story.
A miniature layout of Jinling City, a scaled-down replica of the Beidongshan Han Tomb excavation scene, and ancient sacrificial scenes displayed together with the remains of earthen clay pots... There are few museums that concretely display archeology and culture like Nanbo. historical scene.
"The ultimate purpose of the exhibition is not to display pots and pans, but to display the lives of people in this area in the past." Gong Liang always insists that "a good exhibition is experiential and impresses the viewer with stories." He believes that the most important job of a curator is , is to look for the relationship between exhibits, between exhibits and regions, between exhibits and people, and then tell the public about this relationship.
The museum is like a time tunnel that takes you back in time to understand where you came from and where you are going. Here, the concept of time is stretched and blurred, and in the coordinates of history, individuals become small, but close to eternity in another way.
Gong Liang is the one who sorted out time and opened the "any door".
Today, we walked into the Nanjing Museum and were immersed in the old dream of the Republic of China Pavilion. We lined up in an endless queue to get stamps, buy refrigerator magnets for the hibiscus stone pan and chiton ear stove, and grabbed some of the annual "Museum Wonderful Night" "votes - behind these "Internet celebrity" projects is the success of Nanbo's young team. This is also Gong Liang’s understanding: Let young people engage in cultural and creative activities.
The picture shows Gong Liang participating in the program. Photo courtesy: Nanjing Museum
In 2018, he took the Nanjing Museum to the stage of "National Treasure". Although the great Baoen Temple, one of the seven wonders of the Middle Ages, was noisy, the exquisite arches of the glazed pagoda made people unable to help but daydream about it. How majestic it was.
There are more people in Nanjing Museum.
I don’t know who discovered it first, but the crystal-clear Hibiscus Stone Chili Ear Cover Stove suddenly became an “Internet celebrity”. There were five levels of onlookers watching. The supply of refrigerator magnets of the same style was also in short supply. The queue to buy could be several people. Wan, Gong Liang was glad to have listened to the words of the young people in the team.
When he first wanted to make cultural and creative products, he thought he had a good aesthetic and chose other simple cultural relics for proofing. However, the young people in the team strongly recommended some new styles. He was a little surprised: Are these small objects so special?
In the end, the sales of the products chosen by young people far exceeded expectations. The small handbook for the "Musha" exhibition sold for more than 1.4 million yuan. Museum staff recently told him that 150,000 pieces of small powder stove refrigerator magnets cost 30 yuan each in two months.
Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, hibiscus stone flat ear stove cover. Photo courtesy: Nanjing Museum
Today, if you search for this refrigerator magnet on social media platforms, big data will automatically link it to Nanjing Museum exhibition guide and Nanjing tourism. There are few cities like today's Nanjing. When talking about city landmarks that must be "checked in", people will include museums (pavilions) among them.
If you ask the locals, they will distinguish between "courtyard" and "museum" very carefully: the most famous one here and a must-see is the Nanjing Museum.
From 2.26 million in 2014, to 4.17 million in 2019, and to 5.01 million in 2023, the number of visitors to Nanjing Museum has almost doubled.
When he first took office as the dean, Gong Liang said at the meeting that he wanted to do three things, the last two of which were "to make sure that Nanbo will not be short of money" and "to let everyone in the team get what they deserve."
The first one on the list is "making Nanjing Museum more famous".
"Is it OK now?" This was a question, but Gong Liang was very sure.
The picture shows the main hall of Nanjing Museum. Photo courtesy: Nanjing Museum
Plant the seeds and wait for spring and autumn to bear fruit
During the rehearsal period of Jiangsu Satellite TV's Spring Festival Gala, he took out his portable computer to look for information. On the 13-inch desktop was his own photo of the old hall of Nanjing Museum at night, with a lone moon hanging high in the sky and a crowd of people on the "Museum Wonderful Night" on the ground.
The 450G memory in the computer hard drive is almost full. All the files are arranged and classified according to the system. At a quick glance, the whole screen is filled with "Nanjing Museum". A few years after his retirement, he is still sorting out his relationship with the museum.
In the office on the fourth floor behind the old hall, there is no reception area, and there are no calligraphy and paintings that I admire. The only thing that can be related to my personal life are the photos of my family on the bookshelf. Looking out from the south-facing window, he has a panoramic view of the entire Nanbo. When he is not signing in the office, he is visiting various exhibition halls. He visits all the exhibition halls every week and sees that the notices posted randomly are inconsistent with the atmosphere of the entire exhibition hall. , discussed with the team members to design the exhibition boards and “hide” them: “Public space is also part of the museum’s exhibition.”
The cleaners cleaning the outside may also be part of the "exhibition". If you can't find a certain exhibition hall, you can even ask the cleaning staff directly. They are familiar with this museum, and some have stayed here for nearly ten years. This is a relatively mobile position and is usually contracted to a third party. Or temporary workers. But Gong Liang directly signed a formal contract with the security guards and cleaners of Nanbo, paying five insurances and one housing fund, encouraging them to stay for a long time, find a sense of belonging in Nanbo and become a part of it.
Now, even though Gong Liang has retired, when he occasionally goes to Nanbo, they always take the initiative to say hello: "Dean Gong, that's great!"
On the day of his retirement, Gong Liang didn't tell anyone except his team members. After getting off work, after driving out of the museum, he stopped and posted a message in the work group: "I'm retired. Thank you all. I won't be here tomorrow." The group suddenly exploded: "Why did Dean Gong just Retired so quietly?"
About half a month later, he received a message from the museum staff saying that he needed help and advice on something: "Come on, I'll wait for you." However, he refused, and he rushed to "brainstorm" with his colleagues countless times. meeting room. When I opened the door, I found that it was a surprise prepared by my colleagues. They "lied" him here, held a retirement ceremony, and made two commemorative books containing photos of Gong Liang's work at Nanbo for more than ten years. He didn't even archive a lot of things himself.
The picture shows Gong Liang. Photo courtesy: Nanjing Museum
Looking back on his decades of experience, he found that he seemed to have been working two "jobs" at the same time: while doing archeology in college, he also studied ancient architecture, and while doing maintenance of ancient buildings, he also did administrative work in cultural relics management. When I was the dean of Nanbo University, I also worked part-time in the administrative work of cultural protection and management in the province. He was very proud that he still maintained good business ability when he retired as a manager, so he named his study "Liangxingzhai".
Now, Gong Liang is the honorary director of Nanjing Museum and an ordinary volunteer. When needed, he provides the museum with some suggestions on cultural relic protection and exhibition. When he said this, he was afraid that we wouldn't believe it, so he emphasized it several times: "It's true. I filled out the application form to apply to be a volunteer."
In 2023, Nanjing Museum celebrates its 90th birthday. At the opening ceremony, he was invited by the hospital to share his experience in the past ten years at the Expo in 9 minutes. He made a 53-page PPT and wrote a speech of more than 2,000 words, summarizing it with "a museum of hyperlinks".
Gong Liang in 2024 is still concerned about the development of the China Grand Canal Museum in Yangzhou. When he was chatting with Shan Jixiang, the former director of the Palace Museum, backstage at the Jiangsu Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala, the two of them had been discussing this topic. There is a dense stack of records in the reddish-brown notebook he carries with him.
There was a large number "31" written in the middle of the first page of the notebook, which was traced twice with a black pen. This is the 31st notebook Gong Liang has used since he entered the government agency in November 1997.
Among the audience watching the exhibition in Nanjing Museum, there were also many children, holding pens and notebooks, recording something one stroke at a time.
Plant a seed of hope and wait for spring and autumn to bear fruit - this is also the theme of the 90th anniversary of the founding of Nanjing Museum. There is this sentence in the preface of the exhibition:
"Respect the ideal, respect the years, and respect the years." (End)