A journey to the Nanjin Museum

The exciting and strange gourd

I &Zoe

On 15th of February which was a rainy Sunday, I went to Nanjing Museum with my friends Zoe and Karen. At 1 o’clock in the afternoon, we went into the museum and started our art journey. There were many kinds of the themes of exhibitions, such as Ancient Bronze, Folk Art, Ancient Treasure, and Ancient Chinese Earthen Ware. My favourite exhibition and artwork was Ming and Qing Porcelain. The artworks in this exhibition were the things the same as china and made in Dynasty Ming and Qing. Because China’s national name is come from china, then I had an interest in this exhibition.
The artwork that attracts me a lot was a bottle gourd. This tool was useful in ancient China, for people first planted the gourd and waited to harvest, then cut it down and divided into two same pieces, and emptied the inner stuff, a gourd was made and could be used to hold water or other liquid. Now in the exhibition, this gourd was made in the form of porcelain. Porcelain can be divided into many kinds depend on colors. Because of the gourd was cyan, it belongs to celadon. In original, porcelain was come from ware, but it had higher temperature to be made. The appearance of the gourd was smooth and clear. Its whole body was cyan and did not have other colors. When you read there, you maybe will think it does not have anything special that worth I love, but if you observe it through its shape, you will discover what is extraordinary. The shape of the gourds is all two spheres on the top and the bottom, but very thin in the middle. However, this gourd was different, the upper body is a sphere and the lower body was a cube! If you are a Chinese, maybe you can guess what it means. It was a long history from Taiji. Ancient Chinese thought that the sky was round and like a bowl above the square ground, the circle, sphere and anything round represent the positive things. In reserved, square, cube, rectangle and anything have corners represent the negative things. As a result, the artist who made this gourd mixed the old thinking about the world and the traditional gourd; it surprised me a lot that how well the artwork mixes the ancient Chinese culture!
Other exhibitions are also very exciting, even the steps of making wares in ancient time are shown in the museum. If I have free time, I am really willing to visit the Nanjing museum again to feel the deep culture of China.