The Rhythm of Dance Steps~The Hallmark of Blessings~The Shenjiang Culture of Luzhou

Visit with Curator Liang-Chuan Wang

It’s raining outside. Our teacher took us to the Forbidden City Museum in Luzhou City. When we get there, an excellent sculptor comes to answer the door. He is the Curator of this museum, Mr. Liang-chuan Wang. He shows us a video in the meeting room. The video is about an important general, named Weng Zhong, for the first emperor of Qin Dynasty. His appearance is quite dignified. Guilty people will get very scared when they see the statue of Weng Zhong.
There are two Weng Zhong statues in the Forbidden City Museum in Luzhou City standing parallel, but for some reasons, their positions became separated farther and farther. We are all very terrified with this supernatural story. After watching the brilliant video, we start our interview for today. Before the interview, I recall Teacher’s reminder that Mr. Wang is a person who pays attention to people’s manners, so he wants us to watch our tone and attitude. After playing the video, Mr. Wang starts to tell us Shenjiang stories. After that we go over all the questions we prepared at school. The interview content is as below:
Pin-yu:    “Which Shenjiang statue is the first one made by you?“
Mr. Wang: “The first pair I made were General Qi and General Ba.”
Pin-yu: “Who taught you the skills of sculpting?““
Mr. Wang: “My father, Dao-zui Wang taught me the sculpting techniques! “
Pin-yu:  “There are many organs on a statue’s face. Which part do you feel is the most difficult to carve?“
Mr. Wang:  “The most difficult part on a statue’s head are the eyes, since a statue is good or bad, fully depending on the production of its eyes. Therefore, I feel the most difficult part is the eyes. “
Tsai-yi:  “Do we still embroider the plum flower pattern on Shenjiang statue’s arms in Luzhou area?“
Mr. Wang:  “Who told you that is a plum flower pattern? That is a lion totem.”
Kuan-ting:  “Who is your father’s master?”
Mr. Wang:  “A master from Tangshan.“
(In other words, the Tangshan Master was the first generation, Dao-zui Wang was the third generation, and Curator Liang-Chuan Wang is the fourth generation)

In the middle of interview, Mr. Wang tells us: “Now, we should eat less horsemeat and beef. In the past, many horses died on battlefield, so we don’t want to eat their descendants. Cattles were used to plow fields, and they contributed their entire life to humans. We should not eat their descendants either.” Even though this is different from our purpose for the interview, we know that Mr. Wang wanted us to show our appreciation. Cattles were great assistants to provide us grains in the early Taiwanese agriculture age. Without their help in plowing fields, how could people feed their family? Therefore, we should try not to eat beef. Young people today do not think so anymore. I think eating beef is not a big problem as long as we don’t have monophobia. Mr. Wang mentions this in the interview of the Shenjiang historical culture to remind us that we should show our appreciation towards Shenjiang culture too.
Today we interview Mr. Wang with some questions about Shenjiang culture. Our teacher is happy to talk to us too. In the Forbidden City Museum in Luzhou City, there are two Shenjiang statues that were carved by Mr. Wang personally. Mr. Wang says it requires much attention to sculpt statues. We are happy to ask Mr. Wang many questions today. Even though we do not have much time, he answers our many questions. We also thank him for his valuable lesson and hope we will work harder to get improvement, little by little. I think, Shenjiang statues teach us a lot. For example, Shenjiang statues do not bring us fear, but dignity and respect. We should not feel scared when we see Shenjiang statues. From this interview, I learn that there are lots of secrets, loyalty, filial piety, chastity, and righteousness behind Shenjiang culture.

Afterthoughts:
Shun-wei Huang: At two in the afternoon, we went to visit the host, Mr. Ling-chuan Wang, of the Forbidden City Museum in Luzhou City. We smelled the ancient odor once we walked in. Mr. Wang first showed us his recording videos. The video mostly talked about ancient Weng Zhong and the Golden Copper Horse of a Tang Dynasty emperor, Tangxuanzong. It said that Weng Zhong is a guarding god for protecting people. Some people have seen Weng Zhong walking inside the museum and the Golden Copper Horse running around Zhongyang road. There are big statues of Weng Zhong on both sides of museum. The statues are very tall, about the same height of one floor. One day, one volunteer found out someone was behind her while cleaning the museum. She thought it was an illusion, but Mr. Wang told her that Weng Zhong was making an inspection tour behind her. Because of this supernatural event, they have put cement beneath the statue to prevent that from happening again. A university student has also seen the Golden Copper Horse’s head moving while he was visiting museum. In order to prevent the horse from running on the street again, Mr. Wang sculpted a Zhang Fei statue to sit on the horse. Zhang Fei looks powerful and mighty, and holds a Seven Star sword, coming down from ancient age to take care of that horse. Even though Mr. Wang mentioned something that has nothing to do with our subject, we still were very interested.
Ming-hsien Hsu: Today, our director took us to visit the Forbidden City Museum in Luzhou City. Director told us that the curator is a famous sculptor and collector of god statues and Shenjiang statues. He also mentioned that the curator pays attention to people’s manners, so that we need to watch our manners while asking questions. When we got there, the curator came out to welcome us. He took us in and played a video about Weng Zhong for us to watch. It’s said that Weng Zhong was a general who beat up Xiongnu for Qin Emperor. Weng Zhong was a very strong general. Xiongnu people were very afraid of him. After he died, Qin Emperor missed him very much, so he ordered people to carve two stone statues of Weng Zhong. These two statues were installed in his imperial palace called “Civil and Military Weng Zhong”. When Xiongnu sent a messenger to negotiate with Qin, the messenger was terrified when he saw the lively statues, and thought Weng Zhong was still alive.
After watching the video, the curator offered time for questions. I went first and asked: “Do we still embroider a plum flower pattern on Shenjiang statue’s arm in Luzhou area now?” The Curator replied: “Who told you we embroider a plum flower pattern on Shenjiang statue’s arm in Luzhou?” Director quickly answered his question for me: “A gentleman in Yuqing Temple told us that we embroider plum flower patterns on Shenjiang statue arms in the Luzhou area” The Curator explained: “It’s a lion totem, not a plum flower.” I continued to ask: “Do Shenjiang statues in other area have their own particular features too?” The Curator replied happily: “Even though Shenjiang statues have its own features in different areas, their appearances are about the same.” Shenjiang statues’ appearances all look terrifying, but the Curator’s explanation has changed my thoughts completely. All these Shenjiang were tall and strong when they were alive. They protected the country, lived with good faith, and were scrupulous in separating the public from personal interests. After they died and turned into Shenjiang. They still maintained the spirit of loyalty, clarifying right from wrong, blessed the good and punished the evil, and maintained righteousness and justice in the living world. I admire them from the bottom of my heart.
Po-hung Wang: Today, we went to interview Mr. Liang-chuan Wang of the Forbidden City Museum in Luzhou City. He played two videos for us to watch. After watching the videos, I asked him “ How come there was a plum flower on the Shenjiang statue’s arm in the past? “ and Mr. Wang replied: “Who told you this?” Director replied for me: “People from Yuching Temple told us about that.” Mr. Wang also told me that it’s not on the arms; it’s on the shields on the arms. I ask him what is the Kai-Guang ceremony, and he says that it’s a ceremony for people’s souls to enter a Shenjiang statue. Mr. Wang presented some viewpoints that we haven’t heard before, and couldn’t find out from books either. Also, these viewpoints about Shenjiang are different from our teachers’ viewpoints. I learned that one thing could have many different perspectives.

In today’s interview, we discovered a special question. That is, do Luzhou Shenjiang statues carry plum flowers or lion patterns? According to our interview in Yuqing Temple, the gentleman told us that the most special symbol for Luzhou Shenjiang statue is plum flower pattern, but in today’s interview with Mr. Wang, he kindly asked us, who told us Luzhou Shenjiang statues carry plum flowers. His emotional expression was stronger and gave us a shock. However, after our research later on, we found out that Luzhou Shenjiang statues were made by different temples, which belonged to different factions, and hence have different symbols on their arms. Plum flowers and lions are all Luzhou’s symbols. We learned, from this, that we should always work with bold assumptions and careful verification.