On January 13, 2024, an article pushed by Peking University's official Weibo has attracted widespread attention from the society. "The years are speechless, and the stone has words, and a thousand years of caves look at Yungang. The article introduces the "Rong Yungang Classic Art Exhibition" successfully held in the Centennial Lecture Hall of Peking University, and tells the efforts of three generations of Peking University scholars such as Su Bai and Hang Kan on the road of Yungang Studies.
The picture shows the representative of Hang Kan. (Courtesy of the representative).
Hang Kan, deputy to the National People's Congress and president of the Yungang Research Institute, graduated from the School of Archaeology, Culture and Museums of Peking University under the tutelage of Mr. Su Bai. In 1993, in order to complete a coursework, Hang Kan came to Yungang Grottoes for the first time. In 1994, he published "The Time of the Collapse of the West Wall of Yungang Cave 20 and the Initial Layout Design of Tanyao Fifth Cave", and since then he has been associated with Yungang Grottoes. In his more than 30 years of archaeological career, he has continued to work in the fields of Buddhist archaeology, Song and Yuan archaeology, museology and cultural heritage protection, and has published more than 60 articles, such as "Several Problems of the Net Bottle Unearthed at the Two Taji Bases in Dingxian County, Hebei", "Local City Sites in the Song and Yuan Dynasties", and "Re-study of the Riverside Map of Qingming Dynasty".
In February 2021, the Yungang Research Institute was officially established, with Hang Kan as the president. The responsibility of the Yungang Research Institute is to do a good job in the protection and research of the Yungang Grottoes, and to establish the discipline system of Yungang Studies together with universities and other scientific research institutes. As the earliest large-scale grotto group in the east of Xinjiang, Yungang Grottoes was built by the royal family of the Northern Wei Dynasty at that time to concentrate the national skills, manpower and material resources, which has a wide influence and occupies an extremely important position in the history of the development of Chinese grotto art.
How to protect, study and make good use of Yungang Grottoes? Hang Kan said: "Cultural heritage is a special strategic resource, which should be utilized, and because of the non-renewable nature of cultural heritage resources, protection has become the premise of utilization." The "Rong Yungang Classic Art Exhibition" held by the Yungang Research Institute at Peking University is a new exploration in the interpretation of the value of world heritage. Under the framework of "Yungang Studies", we actively explore Yungang music and dance, and turn the static Yungang Grottoes into vivid dances. Teachers and students of Peking University jointly created the experimental work "Lotus Rhyme Sanskrit", and the cultural heritage of thousands of years ago was "lived" with the efforts of teachers and students of Peking University.
The development of cultural heritage protection requires corresponding discipline support and talent training. As a newly elected representative of the National People's Congress, Hang Kan, who has been on the front line of cultural heritage protection for a long time, is well aware of the importance of discipline construction and talent training. To this end, at the first session of the 14th National People's Congress, he submitted a proposal to strengthen the construction of cultural heritage courses and personnel training, and he believed that the current problem is a big factor restricting "making cultural relics come alive".
Hang Kan told reporters that cultural heritage not only includes archaeological cultural heritage, but also includes architecture, landscape, settlements, cultural routes and other types of cultural heritage, and the relationship and interaction between different types of cultural heritage is difficult to be fully reflected in the existing archaeological discipline system. At the same time, in order to protect a cultural heritage, it is necessary not only to have knowledge of archaeology, but also to absorb the nutrition of history, museology, communication, architecture, chemistry, art, sociology, economics and other related disciplines, and to carry out interdisciplinary research with the value characteristics and protection needs of cultural heritage as the core.
If cultural heritage-related majors are only regarded as the secondary disciplines of archaeology, it is not conducive to the development of interdisciplinary research, it is difficult to develop cultural heritage theories that reflect the characteristics of interdisciplinarity, and it is impossible to truly cultivate talents suitable for the protection of contemporary cultural heritage. To this end, Hang Kan suggested that we should strengthen the construction of China's cultural heritage disciplines, emphasize the interdisciplinarity and application of cultural heritage disciplines, improve the curriculum system and student training mechanism of cultural heritage disciplines, and establish a national heritage college when necessary to provide talent and academic support for the protection and rational use of China's cultural heritage.
*It should be complete, accurate, and indicated** and author information).
Author: Wang Jianghao, Zhang Yuchai.
Editor: Wang Ling.
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Yuchai.