Northern Qi Murals in Taiyuan: A Museum Built on a Tomb

Drive south-east out of the city, past the East Middle Ring Road, and the buildings thin out on both sides of the road until you stop somewhere fairly unremarkable: Wangjiafeng Village, Yingze District, Taiyuan. The museum is here, built on the in-situ preservation of the Northern Qi tomb of Xu Xianxiu. It is the first museum in China devoted entirely to Northern Qi murals built on the original burial site.

The exhibition hall covers a little over 3,800 square metres. That is not large. But from the moment you step inside, the ground under you is different: the plot you are standing on sits directly above a tomb that is fifteen hundred years old.

December 2000: It Saw the Light Again

Xu Xianxiu’s tomb was discovered in December 2000 and unearthed and made public in October 2002; that year it was named one of China’s Ten Major Archaeological Discoveries. Inside are more than 330 square metres of Northern Qi tomb murals — remarkable for their scale, their quality and their state of preservation, in China and abroad alike.

One line in the guide stayed with me: the tomb had waited almost fifteen centuries. Fifteen centuries in which the colours on those walls sat in complete darkness.

Three Halls: Biedu Huacai, Yiyan Qiannian, Jianyi Biaomei

The museum has three exhibition halls. The second — “Yiyan Qiannian” (A Thousand Years in One Glance) — is the most important, divided into three sections: the archaeological discovery, the on-site display, and scientific conservation. It lays out the whole story of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb: how it was found, how the site was saved, and what holds the plaster and the pigment together.

My advice is to start with “Biedu Huacai” (Splendours of the Auxiliary Capital) to build a base. Jinyang was the Northern Qi secondary capital, and its figures, dress, music, dances and processions are worth meeting first; stand in front of the next hall after that, and the impact lands more directly.

The Wall That Makes the Murals Move

The best part is the digital display. The Banquet Scene on the north wall of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb has been projected onto an interactive wall — a row of musicians is painted there, and if you reach out and pluck a pipa string, the picture answers, as if you had just played a phrase with people who died fifteen hundred years ago.

Then you look up, and a domed wrap-around animation is running: the “Ascending to Heaven” mural from the Jiuyuangang tomb in Xinzhou, actually moving. Bo, the beast with the body of a winged horse and a mouth that eats tigers and leopards; the Thunder God, eyes bulging, teeth bared, mallet in hand to strike the linked drums; a bare-bodied deity riding a dragon — one after another they step down off the wall. Only then does it become clear that these murals were never painted for people kneeling to look at them. They were the sky the tomb’s owner imagined.

After Coming Out

The on-site conservation hall is dim and cold, and the staff walk quietly. Having seen the whole thing, I ended up with a fondness for the ordinary village road outside — a Northern Qi tomb under a village, and fifteen hundred years later a temperature-controlled room built over it to keep the paintings alive.

History left few words about Xu Xianxiu as a man, but the tomb walls kept his image: riding, sitting in his tent, raising a cup. That, perhaps, is where murals are more partial than texts.