Chapter 13 Section 6 The Westward Spread of Chinese Ceramic Culture

The great development of maritime traffic has greatly promoted the cultural exchange between China and the West.Because the economy and culture of the Song Dynasty followed the line of the Tang Dynasty and made great progress, it continued to be in a leading position in the world at that time, thus attracting the attention of people from all over the world.The Muslim world admires Chinese culture very much and speaks highly of it. Sa'alibi, a Muslim scholar in the 10th and 11th centuries, said: Arabs are used to calling all exquisite or ingeniously crafted utensils "Chinese", regardless of their real origin.To this day, some well-known dishes are still called "China".China, today as in the past, is renowned for its ingenuity and virtuosity in making rare and exotic objects... They have rare skill in statuary, and such a talent in carving images and painting that one of their artists is When drawing characters, the brush is so vivid, what is lacking is the soul of the characters.The painter is not satisfied with this, he also wants to paint the characters to present a smile.And he didn't stop there, distinguishing a mocking grin from a bewildered grin, a smirk from a look of wonder, a mirth from a sneer.In this way, he achieved a painting within a painting, adding to the painting.

Although these reviews are not lacking in beauty, they reflect the eagerness of the Arab world to absorb the nutrition of Chinese civilization. From the perspective of the outward spread of Chinese civilization, if the export of silk fabrics and the outflow of silk culture since the Han and Tang Dynasties occupied a major position in a long historical period, then after the Song Dynasty, this situation was replaced by the export of ceramics and the outflow of ceramic culture. gradually replaced by far broadcasting.Scholars often refer to the Maritime Silk Road as the Silk and Porcelain Road.

In the Song Dynasty, Huaci porcelain was unique in the world in terms of its large output, variety, variety of colors, and excellent quality. It was also suitable for transportation on large ships at sea, so it was exported to the West.According to "Pingzhou Ketan", in the 12th century, ceramics had become an ideal ballast material for merchant ships sailing to the ocean. "The ships are tens of feet deep and wide, and the merchants share the storage. The people have a few feet to store the goods, and lie on them at night. The goods are mostly pottery, the size is the same, and there is no gap."At this time, due to the continuous southward shift of China's economic center of gravity, the ceramic industry in the southern provinces of the Song Dynasty developed greatly and gradually surpassed that in the north, which greatly promoted the export of sea via the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.Due to the high quality of raw materials, the porcelain produced in the southern production areas is fine, clean and lustrous, with translucency, whiteness in appearance, and high strength and hardness.In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were official kilns in Hangzhou; imitations of Ding kiln and Jun kiln in Jingdezhen; celadon from Yuezhou and Longquan kilns; black glaze and underglaze painted porcelain from Jizhou kiln;Longquan celadon and Jingdezhen celadon are especially famous and sold well overseas.

People in the vast regions of Asia, Africa, and Europe in the Middle Ages all loved Chinese porcelain very much.The rulers of various countries collected exquisite Chinese porcelain in their courts; ordinary people used Chinese porcelain a lot in their daily life; poets and writers even praised Chinese porcelain in their works.Saalibi (961-1038 A.D.) also praised Chinese porcelain and said: "They also have exquisite and transparent porcelain. The porcelain used for cooking is sometimes used for boiling, sometimes for frying, and sometimes for serving. Among the porcelains, the top-grade vessels are apricot-yellow in luster, followed by the same vessels in milky white." Archaeological excavations in the Arabian region since modern times have shown that a large number of Chinese porcelain fragments belong to the Song Dynasty.For example, many pieces of white porcelain and celadon from the late Tang to Song Dynasties were found in ancient palaces and other sites north of Baghdad in Iraq, and fragments of celadon bowls from the Southern Song Longquan kiln were found in the ruins of Taixifeng in the ancient city; White porcelain pieces from the Dehua Kiln of the Song Dynasty and fragments of celadon bowls with peony embossed patterns produced by the official kilns of the Southern Song Dynasty were discovered; in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, fragments of celadon bowls with lotus petal patterns from the Longquan Kiln of the Song Dynasty were discovered, and so on.Since the Tang Dynasty, Chinese porcelain has been exported to Egypt in North Africa.Huaci was transported by sea to various ports in the Red Sea, and then concentrated in Fustat in the southern suburbs of Egypt, and then transferred to Alexandria, Morocco and the Maghreb (countries on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa except Egypt).According to the results of the Fustat archaeological excavation at the beginning of this century, among the hundreds of thousands of ceramic fragments unearthed, 22,000 pieces of Chinese ceramics have been identified.Among them, the earliest one belongs to the Tang Dynasty, including the famous Tang Sancai, white porcelain from Xingzhou, and kiln porcelain from Yuezhou; from the end of Tang Dynasty to the Five Dynasties, there are kiln porcelain from Yuezhou and yellow-brown glazed porcelain, etc. There are beautiful grate carving patterns, and occasionally there are a small amount of carved patterns, covered with elegant olive green glaze; as for Song porcelain, there are many places, most of which are produced in Longquan kiln.

People from various countries on the ancient silk road not only love Chinese porcelain, but also imitate Chinese porcelain one after another if they have the conditions. In the 13th century, the Persians imitated Song porcelain bowls with phoenix patterns painted on them.Egyptian skilled craftsmen imitated Chinese porcelain, starting from the Fatimid Dynasty.A craftsman named Said succeeded in imitating Song porcelain and taught many apprentices.At first it imitated celadon, and later imitated blue and white porcelain.The shape and pattern of the porcelain are all imitated from China, and only the local Egyptian clay is used for the porcelain body.According to Nasir Husrow, an Iranian missionary who visited Egypt in the middle of the 11th century, at that time, imitations had reached a very high level, and they were "so wonderful and transparent that a person could see his own hands through the porcelain."Egyptian craftsmen, who pay attention to fashion, also constantly update their imitations with the variation of imported Chinese porcelain varieties.When the three-color ceramics were imported in the 9th and 10th centuries, they imitated the three-color ceramics to produce multicolored ceramics; when the white porcelain was imported, they imitated the white-glazed ceramics.After the 11th century, celadon, blue and white porcelain, and blue and white porcelain replicas were gradually imitated.Egyptian porcelain was produced in enormous quantities.Among the hundreds of thousands of ceramic fragments found in Fustat, most of them are local products, and among these local products, 70% to 80% are imitations of Huaci.Based in Egypt, Chinese porcelain and ceramic technology spread to Europe, one way to Spain through the Maghreb, and the other way to Italy through Sicily, and spread to all parts of Europe.