More Was More for One Ruler in Qing Dynasty BY Holland Cotter

美国艺评家眼中的满清文化是多么低劣
美国艺评家眼中的满清文化是多么低劣
从建国来就一直致力于建立新中国新文化的中国政府近来突然回归传统，对内对外大力推广所谓的中国文化－腐臭扑鼻的满清文化，一面是电视上辫子格格满 天飞，一面是充斥于各种场合穿着高开叉旗袍搔首弄姿的露腿女人。对此乱象，有识之士已纷纷口诛笔伐，但国内一些权威动则就以外国人喜欢辫子旗袍做理由，借 国际化之东风为满清文化造势。鄙人旅居美国已有5年，深知西人颇讲礼仪，在正式场合，即便不喜欢也会说好。外国人是不是真心喜欢辫子旗袍呢？苍天见怜，我 终于在8月24日纽约时报找到了答案.
北京故宫博物院最近携大量清廷物品来美国展示所谓的康乾盛世,并与ART INSTUTITE OF CHICAGO 联合举办了名为 “SPLENDORS OF CHINA’S FORBIDDEN CITY: THE GLORIOUS REIGN OF EMPEROR QIANLONG”, 我暂译为<<紫禁城之绝世珍宝:乾隆皇帝统治下的盛世>>.为此，纽约时报发表了一篇相关英文评论.纽约时报是一家在全球较有影 响的报纸，其办报风格严谨求实，绝不媚俗，纽约时报的编辑水平更公认代表着全美各大报纸的最高水准。相对于普通美国人对中国文化的一无所知，纽约时报的这 篇文章代表了懂得中国文化的美国评论家对满清文化的认知。
作者一开文就指出清统治者是北方游牧民族,是相对中国汉人而言的外国人,其民族是蒙汉韩以及JURCHEN人的混血，其文化是中亚,印度,西藏以及 欧州文化的混合体: “The Qing were foreigners to Han China, northern invaders who called themselves Manchus. They named their Chinese dynasty Qing, which means pure, though there was nothing pure about it. The Manchus were of mixed Mongolian, Korean, Chinese and Jurchen stock. The culture they inherited as conquerers incorporated Middle Eastern, Indian, Tibetan and European influences.”
此外，作者特别选用了几张展品图片来展示满清的审美，并精辟地把满清的审美观归纳为MORE-IS-MORE的审美观, 即堆砌的,过份装饰的审美观。
“And in truth, although the Qing brought forms like jade-carving to a peak of technical finesse, for most 21st-century eyes, their more-is-more aesthetic is an acquired taste.”
ACQUIRED TASTE 指的是非先天的，并非直接发自于内心的，需要别人从旁指点才能认知的审美品位。例如你要观赏现代派的绘画，参观现代派的展览馆，你就非要有 ACQUIRED TASTE不可。 ACQUIRED TASTE 本身是中性的，但在作者的话中却带上了贬义，作者说“虽然清代把玉雕的技术发展到了技术（是技术，不是艺术〕上的极致，但对于绝大多数的21世纪的人来 说，要能欣赏这种堆砌的美，还需要些额外的修练。”
作者参观展览的收获并不是故宫博物院所设想的感受到了乾隆治下的盛世,反而感悟到虽然满民族表面上好象被中国华夏化了,实际上却把满民族的民族性强加给了统治下的中国人.
“The show is particularly useful in pointing out how the Qing, despite their assimilationist Chinese-ness, asserted their Manchu identity and imposed it on their subjects. Under their rule all men in China had to adopt a Manchu-style pigtail coiffure. Manchu women were forbidden to have their feet bound, an emblem of femininity among the Han Chinese elite. In couture, wide Chinese sleeves were out; narrow Manchu sleeves with flares were in, as were equestrian-style boots that reminded the Manchus of their distant nomadic history.”
中国政府花钱费力，从北京跨了大半个地球运来400多件既 SPLENDOR 又 GLORIOUS 的清廷文物，意在对外宣传康乾盛世的文化大宴，却被美国放在专重于自然史，民族生成史和人类学的自然博物馆中对外展出了；而且还被懂得中国艺术的美国评论 家评作了极具人类学价值的研究满民族的大好机会，这恐怕是出于中国文化权威们的意料之外了吧？
以下为引自8月24日纽约时报艺术版的英文评论以及作者特别选用的几张展品图片

不知为什么，英文原文每行的最后一个字都被显示成了两个字，懂英文的朋友请将下文拷贝到WORD就可以正常阅读了。
More Was More for One Ruler in Qing Dynasty
By HOLLAND COTTER
CHICAGO - When it comes to Chinese art, museums tend to supersize us. The Guggenheim dished up 5,000 years of cultural history in 1998. The Art Institute of Chicago packed a whole religion into its Taoism bash two years later. By comparison, "Splendors of China's Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong," at the Field Museum here, is spartan fare, covering the career of one ruler.
Believe me, though, we're not talking lean cuisine. Most of the 400 objects in the show, on loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing, date from the 18th century, when China, under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), was in High Rococo mode. What the Qing wanted in court art was more: more ingenuity, more virtuosity, more bells and whistles, extra everything. When it came to scale, they went for extremes, the teensy and the colossal, cups the size of thimbles, jades the size of boulders. The Confucian middle way was not their way.
This is one reason the Forbidden City, a walled complex of apartments, offices, reception halls and temples in Beijing, the imperial capital, looked the way it did. Jammed and encrusted with decoration, it was tchotchke heaven. At least that's the impression conveyed by the environments reconstructed in this show, which include an imperial throne room and a Buddhist altar, and by individual items so extravagant as to amount to minienvironments in themselves, like a five-foot-high cloisonné elephant with a lamp on its back.
The Qing were foreigners to Han China, northern invaders who called themselves Manchus. They named their Chinese dynasty Qing, which means pure, though there was nothing pure about it. The Manchus were of mixed Mongolian, Korean, Chinese and Jurchen stock. The culture they inherited as conquerers incorporated Middle Eastern, Indian, Tibetan and European influences. The official coronation portrait of the emperor Qianlong, around whom this exhibition revolves, was painted by an Italian Jesuit priest.
Qianlong, was an interesting guy, a real master-of-the-universe type, and to talk about him is to crunch some impressive numbers. He reigned for nearly 60 years, from 1736 to 1795, and ruled nearly 300 million people in what was then the biggest and richest empire in the world. When he took the throne at 25 he already had eight wives and several children; he eventually supported more than 40 consorts. His intellectual commitments were no less demanding. He wrote more than 44,000 poems and thousands of essays. He was a musician (the qin, or zither, he used is in the show), a better-than-average calligrapher and an avid though not-so-hot painter. As a ruler he was thoroughly hands-on. He had a phenomenal memory for administrative details, signed off on every edict issued by his government and made more than 150 lengthy public relations tours of China, meeting, greeting and scrutinizing to keep provincial officials on their toes.
His interest in cultural history was both profound and pragmatic. He knew that for political credibility the Qing had to be closely associated with Chinese tradition. To this end he sponsored a project to have all surviving Chinese writing from the past assembled, copied and securely stored. The job took 300 scholars and 3,600 scribes 10 years to complete and filled some 4.2 million pages. As an act of conservation it was invaluable. At the same time, it allowed the emperor to survey China's literary history and edit it. He destroyed thousands of books he considered anti-imperialist, almost as many as he preserved.
He also amassed an art collection of hundreds of thousands of paintings, ceramics, jades, textiles, pieces of furniture and metal objects, some of great antiquity, others brand new commissions. Among the more spectacular made-to-order pieces were religious objects, from solid-gold table-top stupas to a fancy-dress version of a Tibetan lama's ritual robe. Immodestly he had himself depicted in paintings as the bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri.
Court apparel was another big-budget item, with everything custom made and minutely coded to reflect hierarchical standing. The number of pearls in a consort's crown indicated just where she fell in the pecking order, as did the number of "eyes" in the peacock feather a courtier wore in his cap. The emperor was intensely sensitive to any breech of protocol.
The show is particularly useful in pointing out how the Qing, despite their assimilationist Chinese-ness, asserted their Manchu identity and imposed it on their subjects. Under their rule all men in China had to adopt a Manchu-style pigtail coiffure. Manchu women were forbidden to have their feet bound, an emblem of femininity among the Han Chinese elite. In couture, wide Chinese sleeves were out; narrow Manchu sleeves with flares were in, as were equestrian-style boots that reminded the Manchus of their distant nomadic history.
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