China had a large stone industry in Neolithic times. As early as 4500 BC, people on China’s east coast employed fine polished stone axes and knives. The working of jade was an extension of this. Jade was used for beautifully coloured and prestigious versions of everyday tools.

At 302 centimeters high, 97 centimeters wide, the tablet was originally engraved in 691 AD for Dayun Temple. The temple has been destroyed long time ago in the history. This stone tablet survived and was collected in 1957. Revolving around the key subject of Nirvana, there are six different stories carved on this stone tablet.

The murals are divided into two parts:

On the walls of ramp, the lower section of walls of courtyard, corridor, and main chamber, the paintings illustrate Lou Rui’s military career and life scenes before his death;

On the upper walls of corridor, courtyard, chambers and gates, those paintings depict the illusory fantasy in which the tomb owner ascended to heaven and returned to the Western Pure Land after death.

The painting topics at that time could be divided into three categories: one is classic stories, second is folk realistic stories, and the third is mythology stories. Royal and noble families specially emphasize on classic stories in order to educate and civilize people. So most of figure paintings in these families have such content. Screens are also a great platform for such stories. This lacquer painting is a typical example, showing most stories about exemplar women.

Weeks ago in the previous post of this “Forbidden Treasure” series, I introduced a pair of lacquer clogs from Zhu Ran Tomb of Three Kingdom Period. Today, I am going to show you another “Forbidden Treasure” from the same tomb: A lacquer plate with a painting of noble life.

Tomb of Zhu Ran was discovered in Jun, 1984. It has been hidden underground for more than 1,700 years. Although this tomb has been raided before, there are still 140+ pieces of burial objects left, most of which are lacquered wood objects.