A Companion to Chinese art by Powers, Martin Joseph Tsiang, Katherine R

18

Ornament in China

Jessica Rawson

Definitions and Traits

A fundamental meaning of ornament is an enhancement of the shape and surface of an
object to draw attention to it; to make it attractive and to place it within a given context
or fashion. Ornament is indivisible from the object itself: form and surface are one (Hay
2010). The possibilities are endless and cover variation and embellishment in dress—as
in woven gauzes or the belts of official Chinese robes; in artifacts and their surfaces—as
in carved wooden furniture or glazed ceramic; and in structure––as in niches in fifth-
century Buddhist cave temples or a trellis fence in a Ming (1368–1644) period garden.
All these can be described as ornament.1

The word ornament carries a number of different and unconnected connotations and
is hard to pin down, slipping easily between several quite different meanings. Ornament
is closely related to, but generally more inclusive than pattern, decoration, and deco-
rative art. Pattern is undoubtedly included within ornament, but it is more limited in
scope. It suggests variations of line, color, and texture that involve or imply repetition, as
in interlacing circles seen on Roman mosaics or Chinese mirrors of the Liao (907–1119)
and Song (960–1279) periods. Decoration, on the other hand, while approximately
equivalent (and sometimes here used interchangeably), embraces a wider universe of
examples than does ornament. It can be used for lights or tinsel on a Christmas tree.
Ornament is unlikely to be used in such contexts.

At any one time and place, craftsmen have to hand a range of materials, skills, and tra-
ditional motifs with which to ornament the artifacts that are central to their society. This
combination can be regarded as a “package,” taking Stuart Piggott’s approach to the
borrowing of chariots by the Chinese and to the skills required to make and drive them
(Piggott 1992: 45–48). In the case of ornament, the materials, skills, favored artifacts,
motifs, and traditional methods of combination of such motifs form a kaleidoscope of

A Companion to Chinese Art, First Edition. Edited by Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

372 JESSICA RAWSON

changing packages. Different regions of the world are highly dependent on the pack-
ages developed in those areas. In the West, the dominant source of ornament was, until
the late nineteenth century, the detailing of stone buildings (Summerson 1980), which
was at all times transferred to furniture and even to jewelry. With the imperial patronage
of Buddhism from the fifth century CE, this package made an impact in China.

In China, where architecture was not dominant, the furnishings of interiors with
textiles, lacquers, and porcelains as well as dress were more important. As all these
materials were worked to a very high standard, workshops, often officially organized
and sometimes in competition with each other, provided a wide range of variations in
color and decoration for any one category of ceramic vase, or ingeniously crafted set of
belt plaques. These highly controlled products were allocated to carefully graded ranks.
Correlation of these artifacts’ decorative qualities (including motifs, and colors) with
social structures is one of the abiding features of China’s ornamental traditions.

Another prominent feature was a vocabulary of auspicious motifs. The early orna-
ment on bronze ritual vessels of faces, birds, and dragons (Figure 18.1) must have been
auspicious. From the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) period onwards, we witness a creation of
images of animals, plants, birds, and figures from stories that were all in some way linked
by a linguistic or narrative substrate. Rams’ heads may originally have been introduced
to the Han from the steppe, but when modeled in clay on tomb bricks, they called to
mind the word xiang or auspicious, as resembling the word yang for ram. Landscapes
created from scrolls and filled with creatures have been also interpreted as auspicious.

Over the centuries, as flower patterns evolved, they too contributed to the auspicious
imagery (Rawson 1984). From the Tang (618–906) and the reign of the Empress Wu
Zetian (684–701) came the peony, inserted in palmette scrolls, representing with its
lush petals wealth and prosperity as well as female beauty and sexual promise. Lotuses,
symbols of purity from Buddhism and the seasonal qualities of the plum blossom, flour-
ishing in winter against the cold, were all used. By the Song period (960–1279), an
abundance of images was deployed, whose messages of prosperity, numerous offspring
and advancement were presented by many associations. These might be realized by
homonyms, by images with seasonal links, by motifs with traditional associations, as
with the pine for longevity or the dragon for good fortune, and by narratives, such as
the story about the peaches of immortality that Monkey stole from the gardens of the
Queen Mother of the West (Bartholomew 2006). Strong linguistic and literary links
provided a binding force that enabled an infinite number of different combinations of
these motifs to be deployed on textiles, porcelains, lacquers, cloisonne´ and architecture
over the Ming and Qing periods (1644–1911) (Rawski and Rawson 2005: 356–381).
Combinations in varied media, distributed through many contexts, as through rooms
in a palace or courtyard house, provided slightly different readings for the viewers,
depending on their own positions in their societies (Hay 2010: 279–307).

This method of creating and varying the contents of ornament has proved even more
resilient than the architectural system has in the West and flourishes still today in greater
China (Rawson 2006). Such motifs were also exported on fine Chinese goods to large
areas of East Asia, especially Korea, Japan, and also Southeast Asia. They were also car-
ried with the mass of products that China exported westwards. However, while in China
craftsmen and patrons who employed such motifs could rely on audiences to interpret
them within a given linguistic framework, this was not true of these other areas, where
even if Chinese characters were used (as in Korea and Japan), they were pronounced in
different ways and did not allow the reading of motifs through homonyms.

(a)

FIGURE 18.1 (a) and (b) Drawings of the bronze vessels from Tomb M160 at Guoji-
azhuang, Anyang, Henan province. Shang period, Anyang phase, ca. 1100 BCE. Source: After
Institute of Archaeology, CASS 1998, 79-104. Drawing John Rawson.

374 J E S S I C A R A W S O N

(b)

FIGURE 18.1 (Continued )
Chinese auspicious imagery was and is intended to influence the outcomes for owners

and viewers of the wall hangings, boxes, and textiles. Such ornament provided and pro-
vides a whole environment for the viewer in parallel with that of the natural landscape.
Just as people have read and been led by plants and trees along a river or retreated in
the face of storm clouds in the sky, so all peoples are manipulated by the ornamented
artifacts or textiles around them, which determine how they should act in specific

ORNAMENT IN CHINA 375

contexts. This acculturation to ornaments starts with young children and mirrors sim-
ilar conditioning to the foods and manners of their societies. Thus ornament fosters
particular actions and reactions and so inevitably constrains craftsmen and their patrons
as well as viewers. Ernst Gombrich has described such constraints as a cats’ cradle, the
patterned mesh of strings that one child hands over to another to twist into new pat-
terns (Gombrich 1979). So craftsmen take on the ornament of their predecessors and
change and alter it to create to variants to satisfy themselves, and this in turn generates
new fashions and new constraints (Riegl 1992).

These chains of ornamental development do not shift and disappear very readily. As
the decoration of the British Museum or the Capitol in Washington illustrates, domes
and columns, but also moldings and acanthus leaves, were worked and reworked in the
West over millennia. In China likewise, dragons and peonies have had an outstanding
capacity to survive many dynastic changes. Indeed in the history of ornamental tradi-
tions, warfare, such as the campaigns between the Xiongnu and the Han in the sec-
ond century BCE, which brought motifs of animals in combat into the belts of imperial
princes, religious prosletization, which brought Buddhism to China in the fifth century,
and annihilation, which gave the Mongols the opportunity of sincizing the ornament
of Central Asia and Iran (Roxburgh 2005) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
are the kinds of force required to achieve a major transition or break in the cats’ cradles
of ornament and design.

To gain some purchase on this varied and varying subject matter, we will discuss
Chinese ornament here within three relatively large time frames: early China, down
to the unification of the empire under the Qin and the Han (ca. 5000–221 BCE); the
early empires and their successors, the foreign rulers of the north, culminating in the
Tang dynasty (618–906); third, the period of the dynasties of the Song to Qing periods
(960–191 CE). Within the chronological headings, ornament is treated by categories of
artifact types, materials, and motifs.

Early China, ca. 5000–221 BCE

In this period, the earliest functions of ornament were to decorate ceramics, a material
representative of China and one that has a very strong foundation in the region’s history.
China, Japan, and eastern Siberia hosted the very earliest ceramic traditions in the world.
China’s first ceramics are dated to around 18,000 BCE, or even earlier, and from about
8000 BCE were inextricably linked with the boiling and steaming of the domesticated
grains of rice and millet. Over millennia, efficient ceramic manufacture and a culinary
system that depended on boiling and steaming, used notably for noodles, rice and tea,
were the forces that sustained a continuous development of ceramics to the very highest
levels, including the manufacture in south-eastern China of the world’s earliest high-
fired and glazed ceramics from about 1700 BCE.

Patterns generated by impressing cord and stamps, and with rollers cutting into
the clay were among the most widespread of ornamenting techniques used in China
and in many parts of the world. Baskets and wooden receptacles contributed to the
pattern-making repertory. As the numerous Chinese Neolithic communities differenti-
ated themselves from one another, they adopted different strategies in making elaborate
wares (Li Zhiyan et al. 2010: 31–89). The painted ceramics of the Yellow River basin and
the northwest are very well known. Patterns of arcs and spirals in black and red could be

376 JESSICA RAWSON

infinitely varied, both as individual creations and as distinctive traces of separate com-
munities. Black and red curved lines enhanced the vessel shapes and demonstrate the
early arrival of Chinese skill with flowing lines. In east and south-east China, ceramic
shapes were themselves highly ornamental and included the contrast of elaborate lobed
bodies with narrow necks, cups, and bowls on high pierced stands and narrow beakers
with fine projecting ridges. Culinary styles required, even encouraged, the making of
complex containers and, at the same time, the ceramic technology also contributed to
more varied and sophisticated cuisine.

Jade is the other typically Chinese material that was much prized by some of these
Neolithic communities (silk was also employed but little has survived). A variety of
stones are known today in China as yu, or jade, as the word is translated, while in
the West the term “jade” generally refers to two minerals, nephrite and jadeite, the
latter not employed in China before the eighteenth century BCE. The different stones
are semi-opaque, but translucent, with varied colors, generally in the range from dark
green to white, often with mottled areas. Such hard stones were, it appears, valued for
their natural surfaces as ornament and the lustrous polish achieved by grinding.

From about five thousand BCE, jades were worked in the north, first in the Xing-
longwa and then in the Hongshan cultures, in present-day Inner Mongolia and Liaon-
ing provinces, being carved as personal ornaments for the ear or the neck. With extraor-
dinary skill, using only a grit and grinding, eyes and a snout were created in raised lines
on large, even hefty coiled creatures, sometimes called a pig dragon. Over the next four
thousand years, people in many different areas of modern China employed nephrite or
similar stones for personal ornaments, but also increasingly for ceremonial items (Figure
4.1), scepters, large disks, and enigmatic large carvings with four rectangular surfaces, a
square cross section and a tubular hole down the center, known as a cong. The material
itself was the principal source of the surface attraction in all cases. Even when figures
with feathered headdresses, grasping a monster with large eyes and fangs, were incised
on many of the ceremonial jades from the Liangzhu culture (ca. 3500–2500 BCE) in
present-day Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the textures and colors of the jades over-
whelmed their fine lines. Faces, with a semi-human character, were especially favored
for jade ornaments by the Shijiahe people in Hubei province. Larger and more elab-
orate examples of these faces and of birds, with features outlined in thin ridges, were
collected by the elites of the Bronze Age dynasties, the Shang (ca. 1500–1045 BCE) and
Zhou (ca. 1045–771 BCE), and they may even have had copies made of them.

Personal ornaments and ritual symbols in jade determined esthetic choices made by
craftsmen and patrons over many millennia. The early interest in cooking and serving
vessels, beverage cups, and storage jars also channeled the continuing use of such objects
as vehicles for ornament to display status and wealth of the elite. Thus much of Chinese
ornamental tradition was initiated on portable objects and later transferred to textiles,
furniture, and architecture. As stone was not used for elite buildings above ground
before the seventeenth century, funds, which in the West were lavished on such struc-
tures, could be poured into these receptacles. Jade with its luminous colors, smooth
highly tactile surfaces, and almost invisible, finely engraved motifs furthered a prefer-
ence for smooth surfaces in porcelain, silk, lacquer, and bronze, with intricate ornament,
over the light-reflecting glitter of gold and sparkling color of cut gems that were the
hallmarks of the visual landscape of Western Asia and the Mediterranean worlds.

This path dependency on jade for personal ornaments and on ceramic vessels based
on cooking practices had a direct effect on the relatively slow adoption of metallurgy

ORNAMENT IN CHINA 377

in China, a technology that was discovered much earlier in Western Asia. Exclusive
concentration on jade, or jade-like stones, seems to have inhibited peoples in central
China from searching for colored stones, such as malachite, that might have produced
metals as personal ornaments. The Chinese creative use of bronze to replicate their
ceramic cooking vessels was thus stimulated with the gradual introduction of metallurgy
across Siberia and into the central plains by way of the Heixi corridor.

As the Chinese were great experts in the use of ceramics, these skills were diverted
to the creation of bronze vessels. Heat-resistant clays and fine loess sands employed
for the ceramic molds in which the bronzes were cast made possible the extraordi-
nary details of the decoration, which evolved from fine, almost abstract compositions
to complex animal face motifs (Figure 17.1), known in much later terminology as the
taotie (Bagley 1987). A technology designed with complex structures of piece molds
encouraged highly symmetrical organization of these face patterns on the vessels. Divi-
sions between the mold pieces allowed the profiles to be enhanced and emphasized with
narrow flanges, created by cutting into the sides of the mold pieces. Early elaborations
of the faces were given long elongated quills, almost submerging the eyes, jaws, and
horns of the beasts. Accompanying this face, which could be and was rendered in many
different ways, were other creatures, mainly dragons and birds. Much effort has gone
into attempting an iconographic study of the motifs. However, they are likely to have
had standardized meanings that were primarily auspicious; the multitude of ornamental
variations probably did not generate separate religious, ceremonial, or sacrificial con-
tent. More significant were the different levels of elaboration that seem to have meshed
with social status. Very fine detail emphasized vessel forms and must have required close
engagement, if it was to be read at all, rather in the same way that the fine incised lines
on Liangzhu jades could only have been appreciated by those who held them in the
hand.

So numerous and highly decorated were the vessels that the period might be thought
of as a “bronze vessel age,” differing markedly from Western Asia, where bronze was
used for sculpture of rulers and deities as well as for tools and weapons. As deities were
not represented in human form, such sculpture was not contemplated by the rulers or
their advisors in the Yellow River basin, though vessels were frequently given sculptural
forms related to animal-based themes of the ornament. In southern China, in regions
along the Yangtze River, human and animal figures were cast in bronze, some with intri-
cate ornament borrowed from the Shang (Bagley 1987: 32–36), but sculpture based
on figural representation had little impact on central Chinese ornamental traditions
before Han dynasty conquests created new luxury goods, such as lamps supported by
figures, and a new religion, Buddhism, fostered by subsequent dynasties, required new
approaches to ornament to embrace figures of deities in human form.

The elites of the central states owned large numbers of cast bronze vessels that they
used in sets for offerings of food and wine to the dead. The ornamental impact of such
bronzes needs to be seen in this context. A set from Guojiazhuang Tomb M160 at
the Shang capital, Anyang (Figure 18.1), comprised 39 vessels and three bells (Guo-
jiazhuang 1988). Many of them, though not all, are covered with intricate motifs of
taotie faces, dragons or birds, against angular motifs, known as a leiwen pattern. The
ways in which these were distributed across the surfaces of a particular vessel type prob-
ably enhanced the perception of the individual vessels and enabled offerants and partic-
ipants to correlate them correctly with specific foods and wines. In this instance, many
of the pieces in the set, notably the wine vessels with dense arrangements of taotie faces

378 JESSICA RAWSON

among leiwen on the right in Figure 18.1, match one another in their ornament. This
matching ornament would have indicated to the owner and his associates that they
were commissioned within a limited period, perhaps personally by the owner himself,
and were even determined by a particular status or fashion. Among the food vessels
there is much greater variety, which may be because they were assembled from differ-
ent sources, perhaps from different relatives or associates of the tomb occupant. Thus
the forms and ornament of the items in a set expressed its functions as a vehicle for a rit-
ual performance; they presented a display of virtuoso casting indicating the wealth and
status of the owner, and at the same time they were an index of his social interactions
with his peers and his relatives.

The Zhou (1045–771 BCE), the successors of the Shang, instituted two major changes
in bronze vessel casting that had long-term impacts of Chinese ornament over all. First
of all, the Zhou elaborated the brief inscriptions, which the Shang had cast in some of
their vessels, into long historical records, recording achievements of the families who
had commissioned them. Consequently long or short texts, or single characters, were
subsequently incorporated by artists and craftsmen in decorative compositions on many
artifacts, becoming one of the major themes within China’s ornamental tradition (Hay
2010: 201–213). Marriage of script and artifact ensured that the Chinese, skilled with
the brush, would, over centuries, adapt all materials and motifs to an engagement with
linear, calligraphic movement so highly valued in all writing.

The second conspicuous change was a centrally directed reform of the ritual vessel
set in the ninth century, transforming the numbers, shapes, and ornament of the differ-
ent vessels deployed. Simplified vessel shapes and ornament were from the mid- to late
ninth century employed by the elites of all the major polities within the Zhou realm. A
powerful claim has been made that the numerous bronzes and their complex decora-
tion should be recognized as products of a modular system (Ledderose 2000). That is
to say, standard components were developed, such as the eyes, eyebrows and horns of
the taotie face, as well as the repetitive vessel types in a set, for example the numerous
jiao and gu from Tomb M160 (Figure 18.1), that facilitated, or even drove, the produc-
tion of such elaborate and complex multi-item artifacts. This modularity becomes more
pronounced in the ninth century with simplified and repeating shapes. Taotie faces and
dragons lost their interest to craftsmen and patrons, who replaced them with continu-
ous narrow bands of S- and C-shapes. In subsequent centuries, these now encouraged
casters to display their ingenuity with wider, unbroken registers of interlacing decora-
tion. Odd numbers of identically decorated tripods (ding) and even numbers of similar
cauldrons (gui) seem to have reflected the status of their owners. While we do not
know whether such relationships existed prior to this reform, nor how consistently they
were applied after it, it is evident that, from the ninth century, a formal correlation of
artifacts, dress and structures (such as coffin chambers [Figure 4.2] and probably build-
ings) with degrees of rank or status began to be developed in which number, color, and
ornamentation were significant (Powers 2006).2

In the eighth to seventh centuries, the elites adopted two further ornamental strate-
gies to enhance their status. They materialized their political contacts with ostentatious
personal adornment in gold and carnelian acquired from their neighbors. At the same
time, a strong interest in the traditional and antique was evident, expressing the ancient
heritage of their families. To this end, collections of ancient jades and contemporary
small bronzes, which replicated ancient taotie and dragon motifs on shapes now out of
use, were displayed in tombs. With a variety of different motives, collecting, presenting,

ORNAMENT IN CHINA 379

and copying of ancient pieces (readily visually identified by the now obsolete shapes and
decor) were to recur as major features of the possessions of the Chinese.

In 771 BCE, the Zhou king had been forced by invaders from the steppe to leave
his base in the west, in the Wei River valley, and flee eastwards. Growing contact with
steppe peoples from the sixth century reinforced the fascination with gold, as seen in the
fine detail of the bronzes known from a large Jin-state foundry at Houma, in present-
day Shanxi province. Here are large tiger heads attacked by griffins, borrowed from
Western Asian motifs of animals in combat. One creature gripping another also occurs as
the handles of ewers and other pouring vessels across many of the states, into which the
territory was now divided. Inlay of gold and silver, gilding and settings of turquoise and
jade on vessels and personal ornaments, such as belt-hooks, illustrate the ways in which
the elite of the Chinese states emulated their northern neighbors. And at times, these
northerners penetrated far into the Chinese heartland, where their decorated chariots
with silver and gold plaques recall the imagery known from the Siberian kurgans at
Pazyryk.

Jades now were made with a high polish that reflected the light from the many fine
spirals and whorls with which they were embellished, once more referring to the glitter
of gold of the neighbors of the Chinese states (Lin 2012: nos. 164, 165). Some of the
same treatment also appeared on lacquered woodwork, as in the tomb of the Marquis Yi
of Zeng at Suizhou in Hubei province. This southern region is remarkable for preserva-
tion of lacquers and silks that have generally survived only in traces in the Yellow River
region and further north. Lacquers and woven and embroidered silk had ornamental
potentials very different from bronze and jade, allowing flowing and gleaming carvings
of birds and snakes and dazzling, detailed embroidery across large rolls of textile. The
growing importance of lacquer, however, affected all media: craftsmen working alike in
bronze, textiles, jade, and, later, stone carving took up sinuous brushed lines that were
naturally rendered in painted lacquer (Loehr 1967; Powers 2006). Over the centuries
of Zhou rule, in particular, decoration of large quantities of bronzes, lacquers, and tex-
tiles depended upon a growing command of skills through subdivision of labor. Fine
surfaces and intricate ornament provoked a discourse on craftsmanship (Powers 2006:
83–98).

The Early Empires and Their Successors (221 BCE–906 CE)

Despite the evident economic power of the south, a drive toward a unified Chinese state
came from the northwest, from the state of Qin, which had moved into the vacuum left
by the flight of the Zhou eastwards. By 221 BCE the King of Qin, having subdued all the
independent states, took his title as the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huangdi), to highlight
a new beginning. The now famous terracotta warriors signaled a new direction in which
sculpture representing humans and their deities was to play a large role.

The Qin dynasty and its successors, the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), now ruled a large
territory. Major developments in the size of the bureaucracy, unified systems of writing,
weights and measures, and a growing commercial base created conditions very different
from those of the smaller aristocratic dominated states of the pre-Qin period. In place
of the earlier hereditary ruling elites, government officials, military governors of the
borders, local landlords, and merchants could seek and own fine artifacts and create
elaborate tombs.

380 JESSICA RAWSON

The upheavals of the third century had seen a change in the traditional forms of
ancestor offerings in sets of food and wine vessels. And this transformation was taken
further under the Han dynasty, recognized as having two phases, the Western Han (206
BCE–6 CE) and the Eastern Han (7–220 CE). Utensils for daily use were now employed
for ritual offerings. Unification of the territories of the different states had some degree
of homogenizing effect, resulting in similar ceramic forms and lacquer decoration being
exploited across a large area, though local features remained, naturally.

Both the Qin and the Han embarked on campaigns against their nomadic neighbors,
the Xiongnu, provoking a fierce military response. And as a subsequent maneuver to
outflank the Xiongnu, the Han Emperor Wu sent troops to conquer the oasis towns
along the Silk Road. These two military and political choices brought the Chinese into
close contact with their neighbors and their material cultures.

One immediate and rather surprising effect of this contact was a fashion for gold or
gilded bronze belt plaques in nomadic style (Lin 2012: 170). These were especially
favored by the relatives of the Han emperors who, with the title of king, controlled
principalities, primarily in the east or center and by the King of Nan Yue, a local ruler
at present-day Guangzhou. On a set of belt plaques from the tomb of a Chu king at
Xuzhou, animals in combat, with a wolf and a bear attacking a deer with birds’ heads
at the ends of its horns, brought a motif most favored in Siberia right into the heart of
the Han court (Lin 2012: no. 82). All these kings emulated the ornaments and perhaps
also the dress of their foes. Jade too, with a very highly polished small whorls, was used
for copies of foreign cups, as seen in a remarkable rhyton from the tomb of the King of
Nan Yue (Lin 2012: p. 26).

While many of these motifs on gold had a very short life as a court fashion, one impor-
tant ornamental and long-lasting contribution was to be highly significant, namely the
cloud scroll. From Siberia, represented for example by the finds at Pazyryk, the Chinese
took over ornament developed out of the palmette designs of Hellenistic Western Asia
(Jacobson 1985). An undulating stem with small projections that imitated, but did not
resemble, the leaves of the palmette scroll occurred interspersed with imaginary animals
on lacquer boxes and coffins. With the calligraphic flair that Chinese lacquer craftsmen
demonstrated so effortlessly, this simple motif was transformed into clouds by breaking
the stems and adding small curls and hooks in place of the pseudo leaves (Lin 2012:
30–34). Among these clouds now roamed tiny figures of imaginary animals and spirits.
These scrolls were a predominant theme in the ornament of textiles, painted ceramics,
and carved stone reliefs in tombs.

The Han court, fascinated it seems by its Western ambitions, also embraced a whole
range of animal figures cast in bronze in the round lamps held by human figures and
incense burners in the shape of pointed mountains, all of which had prototypes in Cen-
tral Asia or Iran. The mountain shapes followed the profile of an Achaemenid burner of
the type shown in reliefs at Persepolis. Often such creations carried small animal images,
borrowed from the nomads, occupying the crags. And as a third element, the interpre-
tation of the hill censer as an island of the immortals, perhaps those of the Islands of
the Immortals in the eastern sea, at Penglai, was entirely Chinese (Lin 2012: 26–29).

Many of the finest of these often gilded and jeweled pieces have come from major
tombs dug for members of the imperial family deep into mountainsides, providing
several rooms along a horizontal corridor, with different functions for the afterlife.
Although only a few fragments of painted decoration of dragons, other creatures and
cloud scrolls survive, probably all such tombs were appropriately ornamented to match