Feature: Guardians of China's culture

In 1937, Japanese troops were moving through China, killing, destroying and looting, in a campaign to crush the nation into brutal subjugation.

As the invaders approached Nanjing city, then the capital of the country, a brave group of scholars at the University of Nanking hurried to save a wealth of relics from thousands of years of Chinese civilization.

In their retreat to a remote village in southwest China's Sichuan Province, they took thousands of historic items in a bid to preserve their culture. These included rubbings from stone carvings and other inscriptions, which are now being published in a series of books.

"The culture they protected is what made the Chinese people Chinese," says Zhang Sheng, head of the School of History of Nanjing University in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

"The Japanese knew the power of Chinese culture, which is why they tried to destroy the things that united our people."

EXTRAVAGANT AMBITIONS

This year, the university published a book of the first 200 rubbings.

More books are planned as researchers deepen their understanding of the collection stored in the School of History, along with 2,000 other cultural relics.

The collection of rubbings originated chiefly from the Chinese Culture Institute of the University of Nanking, one of the two forebears of the present day Nanjing University.

The University of Nanking was founded in 1888 as a merger of Nanking University, Union Christian College and Nanking Christian College.

The university established its Chinese Culture Institute (CCI) in 1930, with the express mission to study, protect and promote the country's threatened culture.

While modern archeology was established in China at the time, it had little influence on the study of history and culture, so an important part of CCI's work was the collection, cataloging and research of cultural relics.

In 1934, Nanking University's Canadian founder John Calvin Ferguson donated his entire collection of relics, accumulated over 40 years in China, to CCI. These rare treasures included stele inscriptions, rubbings, and a work on calligraphy by Wang Youjun, carved during the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279).

The CCI's ambitions were extravagant when many people were struggling to feed themselves, Zhang says.

After all-out war against the Japanese invasion broke out on July 7, 1937, Japanese forces advanced swiftly. In August, Shanghai fell and Japanese aircraft began to bomb Nanjing.

The university - as an American missionary institution - was theoretically neutral. However, the situation deteriorated so much that teaching stopped on Nov. 18 and the university staff began to secure trucks and vessels to move a few days later, says Zhang.

RESCUED FROM WAR

The first evacuation of faculty and students, led by Qiu Jiakui, Sun Mingjing and others, headed to Chengdu, taking furniture, utensils and the rubbings.

"The teachers could not fire a gun. This was the only thing they could do," Zhang says.

In March 1938, the University of Nanking reopened at Huaxiba, Chengdu. During the relocation, Shang Chengzuo heard of relics being unearthed in Changsha. He went there and collected 66 items. Later he returned while Japanese troops were besieging the city and rescued another 155 items.

The relics Shang saved from the Japanese bombardment are now treasures of the university museum, Zhang says.

Other scholars observed the Yi nationality in Sichuan Province, and traveled deep into western China to collect relics and take photos.

They returned with studies of stone and stele inscriptions, cliff tombs, watchtower gates of the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220), and decorative patterns on Han bricks. They took photos, made rubbings and collected ancient rubbings for the purposes of comparison.

CCI scholars gathered an estimated 2,680 rubbings and other relics in China's west during the eight years of war.

Carefully unfolding rubbings of a work by Huang Tingjian, a calligrapher and poet of the Northern Song Dynasty, Shui Tao, head of the Art and Archaeology Museum of Nanjing University, explains why they are treasured.

"The rubbings have three values: the value of the calligraphy; the value of the historical content; and the value of the poetry," Shui says.

"We can clearly see the calligraphy style changed over time."

Ranging from the Qin Dynasty (221 BC - 207 BC) to Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), some of them involve the most famous figures in China's history, he adds.

Most of the rubbings are complete. "Some rubbing makers in the old times had bad habits. They would break parts of the stone tablets after they made their rubbings to make them more precious," he says.

Some of them are history's only archive after the original stone carvings were lost or destroyed. Shui shows a rubbing of the famed eight-horse embossment from the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907). The relief sculpture required complicated techniques. Several rubbings were made to be composed for the complete image.

SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE

The city of Nanjing still bears the scars of the Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in a six-week campaign of terror. Skeletal remains are still visible in an underground chamber beneath the memorial hall, and an old house inside Nanjing University campus was the home of German businessman John Rabe who protected more than 600 Chinese during the massacre.

From horrors of the war, Nanjing University rose to become one of China's most prestigious universities. Its School of History has a worldwide reputation, especially in the study of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

Hundreds of books in the university museum are testament to the dedication of its outstanding scholarship over the decades.

The publication of the first book of precious rubbings signals the continuity of Chinese culture, says Shui: "It's only a small part of the whole collection." The full set of books will require a lot of work and money.

The remains of poems and sculptures are now housed in three-storied buildings more than a century old, where creepers climb the walls and cicadas chirrup from the trees shadowing over them.

The rubbings are cataloged, labeled in camphorwood cabinets, shielded from bugs and humidity.

Renowned historian Zhang Xianwen, 81, used to sneak into the room where the historic books and relics were stored after the faculty returned to Nanjing.

"This was my secret treasure house," Zhang recalls. As a young teacher, finding "interesting things" among the uncatalogued artifacts was his great pleasure.

"It is hard to quantify how much the older generation saved for us during the evacuation to Sichuan. It is clear that without their efforts, the spirit of the Chinese people might be different," he says.

"Without the culture they protected, people here would only remember the killing and blood of the war." Enditem

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