On November 30, 1947, a speech given by Mr. Tan Qixiang, a famous historical geographer, at the Zhejiang Popular Education Museum was compiled into an article entitled “The Course of Hangzhou’s Urban Development”. It was mentioned in the article that the development of Hangzhou’s urban reached its peak when the Song Dynasty crossed to the south.
In the notes of the Song Dynasty, such as “Old Stories of the Wulin”, “Ji Sheng of the Capital City”, and “Meng Liang Lu”, many fragments of people’s lives during the Southern Song Dynasty are recorded, among which the records of festivals and customs are particularly fascinating for future generations.
In order to explore these profound Southern Song culture and help citizens better understand the customs of the Southern Song Dynasty, the curator team of the West Lake Museum in Hangzhou reviewed numerous historical notes of Song people, and extracted fragments of Song people’s lives throughout the four seasons of the year, forming an exhibition called “Four Prefaces to the Song Capital – The Festival and Customs of Lin’an City in the Southern Song Dynasty”.
Recently, the exhibition opened with a total of 87 exhibits. These exhibits reflect the life and aesthetic tastes of various social classes in the Song Dynasty, as well as the interesting changes in folk customs and traditions in Hangzhou’s urban development process.
The language of north-south integration, the cuisine of north-south fusion, the exquisite and rich products, and the rich charm of West Lake have nurtured the unique customs of Lin’an’s lifestyle and socialization, which have been passed down to this day. The open and inclusive urban characteristics have created a refined, comfortable, leisurely, and high-quality lifestyle for Lin’an people, and integrated into the concept of Hangzhou people, laying a solid foundation for Hangzhou to build a city of quality of life and an Oriental leisure capital. The exhibition is divided into four parts: Taking seasons as the outline, solar terms as the line, and customs as the point, we will take everyone back to Lin’an in the Southern Song Dynasty and experience the circulation of the four seasons together Introduction of exhibition staff.
Do you want to have a ‘journey through’? In this warm spring season, you may as well enter the exhibition hall and “return” to Lin’an City of the Southern Song Dynasty to “explore the flowers”! The exhibition will continue until May 20th.
(Editor in Chief: Ai Yutao, Wang Liwei)
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