The idea of viewing the art and culture of the Silk Road by focusing on archaeological finds from the northwestern region of China (the Gansu and Ningxia provinces) offers an excellent opportunity to consider the process of cultural and ethnic interaction between the Han-Chinese and other cultures. As the only section of the Silk Road within China proper in the early medieval period from the fourth to seventh century, Gansu and Ningxia played an important role as a melting pot where exotic and indigenous traditions intermingled and cross-fertilized. Previous Western scholarship on China and the Silk Road paid more attention to those regions to the west of China proper (traditionally called Xiyu or the “Western Regions” in present-day Central Asia) and to the capital of Chang’n at the start of one end of the Silk Road. With the exception of the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang, our understanding of the cultural characteristics of the Gansu and Ningxia region has been limited. The exhibition of artifacts from this region at the Asia Society Museum in New York, therefore, is a much-needed major contribution to our knowledge of northwestern China and the ancient Silk Road. The lavishly illustrated and well-researched catalogue accompanying this exhibition provides a great resource for the scholars and students who are interested in studying the culture and art of the China side of the Silk Road; it is also an enjoyable book for a general reader.

The catalogue is divided into four parts. Part 1 introduces the historical background of the Silk Road in Gansu and Ningxia and includes three short essays by Annette L. Juliano, Judith A. Lerner, and Albert E. Dien. Part 2 is entitled “Buddhist Monks: Transmission and Translation” and comprises two articles, “Buddhist Art in Northwest China” by Juliano and “Gandhara in Gansu” by Chen Bingying. Part 3, entitled “Foreign Merchants: From Colonists to Chinese Officials,” includes four papers: Judith A. Lerner’s “The Merchant Empire of the Sogdians,” Boris I. Marshak’s “The Sogdians in Their Homeland,” Luo Feng’s “Sogdians in Northwest China,” and Michael Alram’s “Coins and the Silk Road.” Part 4, the conclusion, is written by Juliano and Lerner and entitled “Cosmopolitanism and the Tang.”

The editors of the catalogue explain that their “goal has been to explore questions of cross-cultural exchange, assimilation, and adaptation through the archaeological and artistic records in the Period of Disunity between the fall of the Han and the rise of the Tang” (11). This goal is partially realized by the introduction of a great deal of visual resources in the catalogue, which includes painted clay figurines, Buddhist steles, bronze and gold animals and coins, stone carvings with pigment traces, and handwritten manuscripts. The finely printed color plates and the detailed explanations of the works attest to the diversity of medieval Chinese culture and the significance of regional traditions on the Silk Road; they provide us with an excellent foundation for in-depth research on the questions of “cross-cultural exchange, assimilation, and adaptation.”

The essays are short but interesting. The Introduction, for example, is only two and a half pages, but it describes the geographical location of Gansu and Ningxia in detail and emphasizes the great value of the artifacts from that region in exploring issues of ethnic identity (i.e., what is and what is not “Chinese”), adaptation, assimilation, and sinicization from an art-historical viewpoint. The first essay, “The Silk Road in Gansu and Ningxia” by Juliano and Lerner, offers a historical survey of the Silk Road and an introduction to the archaeological sites along the route. In particular, this article places Gansu in historical context and thus helps us understand the historical and cultural background of the artifacts. Juliano’s “The Unbroken Thread: Nomads in China” and Dien’s “Encounters with Nomads” examine the interactions between the ethnic and cultural Chinese and the non-Chinese nomadic groups in historical and geographical contexts. These essays set the stage for further investigations in varied topics relevant to the local traditions in northwestern China.

The two articles in Part 2, “Buddhist Art in Northwest China” by Juliano and “Gandhara in Gansu” by Chen Bingying, introduce and analyze the Buddhist art in northwestern China. Juliano’s essay is an up-to-date synthesis of Chinese and Western scholarship on the Buddhist caves located along the long, 1,000 miles narrow Gansu corridor and provides a fluent and accurate narrative of local history, as well as a comprehensive description of the Buddhist-art sites. Chen’s article focuses on the formal links between the Buddhist sculptures and paintings in Gansu and the stone sculptures in the Gandhara region. It is exciting to identify some similarities between the artworks in the two separated areas, but the essay does not provide evidence to explain why and how the formal links were established.

Three of the four articles in Part 3 deal with archaeological materials related to the ancient commercial kingdom Sogdiana in the heartland of the Asia continent (present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), which is far from but historically connected with Gansu and Ningxia. Lerner’s essay, “The Merchant Empire of the Sogdians,” briefly introduces the geography and history of the ancient state of Sogdiana. Boris I. Marshak’s “The Sogdians in Their Homeland” concentrates on the history of Sogdiana as shown on the wall paintings excavated in that region. He provides historical evidence to interpret the pictorial program of an archaeological site at Samarkand, pointing out “the best manifestation of Sogdian political thought are wall paintings discovered at Afrasiab, the archaeological site of ancient Samarkand, and datable to about 660” (234). Although Marshak’s research focuses on an ancient non-Chinese state, it provides relevant information to help the reader understand the ties between China and the Western Regions. Luo Feng’s “Sogdians in Northwest China” examines the history and the cultural characteristics of Sogdian immigrants in China by focusing on their burial practice as evident in the excavated tombs in Ningxia. Luo cites ancient Chinese historical records and the written information on the epitaphs found in the tombs of the Sogdian immigrants, as well as the pictorial evidence, to discuss the “remembrance of their Sogdian roots” (243) and their adaptation into Chinese society. The final essay, “Coins and the Silk Road” by Michael Alram, discusses the significance of the coins excavated from and found in Silk Road settlements and oases in our understanding of international trade and cultural relations during the fourth to seventh century. The text provides a survey of the archaeological discoveries of coins from different countries and periods in Central Asia.

Generally speaking, some essays in this catalogue merely describe the history of northwestern China and introduce the archaeological finds in the region by synthesizing existing scholarship without a vigorous intellectual inquiry into the social, political, and religious issues evident in the artifacts. A major limitation of these introductory essays is the disjuncture of history and material culture. They briefly survey the historical changes of northwestern China and/or its neighboring regions but fail to point out the relationship between the historical changes and the visual features of the artifacts. The essays do a good job in providing a general historical background for our understanding of the works of art found in the region. However, the interesting issues raised by the editors of catalogue, such as the questions of “cross-cultural exchange, assimilation, and adaptation,” are not fully examined. The conclusion tries to discuss such questions by using the fourth- to seventh-century artifacts from Gansu and Ningxia, but its main focus has shifted from the local cultures of the region between the Han and the Tang to the cosmopolitanism of the Tang Dynasty.

In spite of the concerns raised in this review, the catalogue and the exhibition are an important contribution to our knowledge of the history and culture of northwestern China and of the ancient Silk Road.