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The cultural relics of Niu Zodiac displayed in Ningbo Museum. (Photo by Zhou Jianping)
To welcome the arrival of the New Year of the Ox and show the unique China Zodiac culture, the “Niu Zhuan Gan Kun-Xin Chou (Year of the Ox) New Year Zodiac Cultural Relics Picture Exhibition” jointly launched by China Cultural Relics Newspaper and more than 40 cultural institutions will be officially launched tomorrow at Dongte Exhibition Hall on the first floor of Ningbo Museum.
Zhang Sitong, curator and collection research department of Ningbo Museum, introduced in the media camp yesterday afternoon that this exhibition is based on hundreds of pictures of cultural relics and artworks raised by China Cultural Relics Newspaper in collaboration with more than 40 cultural institutions, supplemented by 47 pieces of cow-related cultural relics from 11 cultural institutions in Ningbo Museum, Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion Museum, Ningbo Cultural Heritage Management Research Institute, etc., in the form of “pictures+words+Chinese Zodiac cultural relics+non-legacy works”, from history, culture and heritage.
The collective appearance of “Niu” cultural relics of Ningbo Cultural Museum highlights the local characteristics of this exhibition. For example, the blue-black, red-lacquered and gold-painted flower pattern carved by Ningbo Museum shows the shepherd boy and buffalo pressing the stone. Pressing Ishihara is an auxiliary tool in embroidery process, and later it gradually became a handicraft. On display, this stone is a rectangular base with a round carved boy herding cattle and buffalo treading, and the base is decorated with gold-painted flower patterns. Cattle played an important role in China’s ancient farming society, and the boy herding cattle was a symbol of hard work and good harvest, while the huge and honest cow was in sharp contrast with the petite and lively boy, which expressed a beautiful scene of harmonious coexistence between man and nature.
The bronze mirror of the story of Niu Chuanyue in Song and Wu from Tianyi Pavilion Museum in Ningbo is calm and atmospheric. The back of the bronze mirror is decorated with the story lines of “Wu Niu Chuan Yue”. The theme is bright and prominent, and it is full of interest, which makes people think about the hot summer scenes in ancient times, adding a bit of deep charm to the bronze mirror.
This exhibition is the blessing of the New Year, and it also borrows the Chinese zodiac, a long-standing folk culture, carries forward the excellent Chinese traditional culture, inherits and revitalizes folk crafts, and promotes the wide spread of intangible cultural heritage.
During the Spring Festival, under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, the Ningbo Museum will continue to present wonderful exhibitions for the audience, such as “Strange New Wind-Exhibition of Eight Weird Treasures of Yangzhou in Tianjin Museum”, “Appreciation of Treasures-Exhibition of Treasures of Ningbo Museum” and “Memory of Ningbo City”, etc., and will also launch parent-child activities with the theme of “Celebrating the New Year”.