ASIAN ART

THE EXHIBITION Virtuous Heritage: Xu Family of Guangzhou: Mandarins, Revolutionaries, Educators and Scientists at the University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, is dedicated to the Xu clan, the first family of Guangzhou. Their fortunes were intimately linked to the vicissitudes of the late Qing (1644-1911) era and after, a period of 150 years, during which six generations thrived. How they adapted during this time of great transformation, from salt merchants to court officials and from Qing loyalists to Republican rebels and communist revolutionaries, form the narrative of the show.

The Xu clan originated in Chenghai in Guangdong province. It came into prominence in the late Qianlong period (r.1735-1795), one of the most extensive and prosperous of Chinese empires. Trade with the west was confined to an enclave in the capital, Guangzhou (Canton) where strict controls were imposed in 1757. Sometime in the Qianlong era, Xu Yongming from Chaozhou (Swatow) settled in Guangzhou. His son, Xu Baiting (1772-1846), the patriarch of the clan, made a fortune through the salt trade, a government monopoly, by contracting it out to the community. Largely through his own efforts, Baiting suppressed piracy along the Canton coast for which he received an imperial award. Achievement throughout Chinese history was equated with careers in officialdom, determined by the imperial examination system, the core of which comprised three degrees, the xiucai, the juren and the jinshi. Baiting had lofty ambitions for his descendants. He established a clan school in the family compound, Xudi on Gaodi street, so that they might rise through the ranks. His eldest son, Xu Xiangguang (1799-1854) was the first in the family to attain the juren at twenty, and the jinshi a dozen years later.

The early Xu’s were Qing loyalists and 19th-century patriots who witnessed their country’s first signs of decline. Before Xiangguang’s lifetime, Guangzhou’s trade had been balanced in China’s favour. The contraband opium trade subsequently introduced by the English East India Company from India – to pay for tea – caused a huge outflow of Chinese silver bullion. Beijing dispatched Commissioner Lin Zexu south to put an end to it, but atrocities escalated into the Opium War. Xiangguang raised 1.5 million silver taels towards the war effort. When the Treaty of Nanjing – the first of the unequal treaties – ceded Hong Kong to the British in 1842, he contributed to fortifying the Kowloon peninsula, blocking British advances. A peacock plume on his Manchu headgear indicated imperial honours conferred by the court.

The Xu clan reached its zenith during the third generation. Xiangguang’s son, Xu Yingrong (1820-1891) became a juren when he was 23, enabling him to hold local and provincial office. To stem further western incursions, he built a fort in Guangzhou. When he became a jinshi, court and high central government office was open to him, including that at the Grand Secretariat endowed with special powers. In the 1850s, the Taiping rebellion broke out in Guangxi spreading anti-Manchu sentiment as it escalated. Yingrong, then prefect at Linjiang, Jiangxi foiled the rebels. The Qing practice of never assigning mandarins to their home province – to forestall corruption – was in force at the time. Yingrong was put in concurrent charge of two other provinces. He looked after military affairs in Shandong, and was posted to Jiujiang, Jiangxi in 1866 and 1872. Taking charge of customs and tax issues, he became imperial Kiln Supervisor at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, Jingdezhen overseeing ceramic production for the Tongzhi emperor (1862-1874).

Yingrong collected tiles from the Jin (1115-1234) period and had a private studio called Jinzhuan Yinguan, ‘Hall of Appraising Jin Tiles’. Porcelain objects from Jingdezhen bearing his personal studio name and basemark made around 1872, attest to his privileged social position. Two covered bowls of white glazed porcelain boast motifs of – pink, blue, violet, black, red and yellow – in the famille-rose palette. Wheel spinning produced the circular forms used to make their ceramic cores because yuan, ‘round’ is a connotation for ‘eternal life’ and a rebus for ‘fulfilment’. Enamels of mineral pigments with a lead base were applied on their surfaces and fired twice, so that colours stayed intact.

A centralised medallion of the lotus blossom, encircled with a ruyi band, is the focus of one green bowl, bearing the Xushi Jinzhuan Yinguan basemark. Its grid of plum flowers is decorated with peonies and chrysanthemums. Formalised shou characters, suggesting birthday celebrations amid auspicious emblems in famille rose enamels decorate a blue bowl. It bears the Jinzhuan Yinguan basemark also seen on blue and white dishes. The shou character mingling with stylised silkworm scrolls from Chinese bronzes forms the basis of one. Other motifs include sacred lotus leaves and the bajixiang, ‘eight auspicious emblems’ introduced from Tibetan Buddhism during the Yuan.

Yingrong’s cousin, Xu Yingkui (1832-1905) was another luminary of the third generation. Academically precocious, he attained the jinshi rank at eighteen, and was appointed to the prestigious Hanlin Academy. The first Cantonese named Deputy Executive of Metropolitan Examinations in 1880, he rose to ministerial rank. After a string of official positions, he was made Foreign Affairs Minister, and co-signed in 1897, the Treaty on the Extension of the Hong Kong Territories.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Western merchants at the Treaty Ports opened by the Opium War had given rise to a special genre of painting called ‘export art’. It flourished from the mid-19th century to cater to their taste and was identified with Guangzhou. Cantonese craftsmen commissioned to make export paintings for European clients used western media, methods and styles to create landscapes of the Canton coastline and its trading settlement in the style of Chinnery. Other subjects included the livelihoods and customs of the locals and their portraiture in traditional costume. Export painters remained anonymous; those with Anglicised names, Spoilum, Tingqua and Lamqua being the most prominent.

Yingkui, the most distinguished Xu by status, commissioned a large ‘ancestor’ portrait of himself and his wife, seated against ‘bird and flower’ screen panels. The vertical scroll, some 160 cm long, reflects his standing and is exceptionally elaborate. It is the work of two painters. One treated their faces to the ink drawing style taken from late 19th-century photographs. The other painted their ermine-lined robes heavily embroidered with motifs representing the universe, complete with shoulder capes. Yingkui’s first rank crane insignia badge is also seen on his wife, wearing the head-dress of an official spouse. Also indicating rank is his coral hat finial and coral necklace. The confronting floral motifs at the scroll’s base, were probably a type of Chinese rococo, influenced by the baroque repertoire.

China’s defeat in the Opium War had weakened Qing authority. The Taiping rebellion crushed in 1864, undermined it further. Foreign encroachment gathered pace in the late 19th century with Meiji Japan (1868-1912) joining the fray. It intervened in Taiwan and annexed the Ryukyu Islands, before turning to Korea, then a Chinese tributary state. The Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) ensued. Its humiliating defeat notwithstanding, China sent students for the first time to Japan in 1896. Xu Bingzhen (late 19th-early 20th century), the most prominent of the fourth generation Xu’s, was despatched to Japan twice. He had attained the gongsheng, ‘senior student’ rank at the Imperial College, the last of his coterie to do so before the imperial examinations were abolished in 1905. Bingzhen led a political group to Japan, documenting his observations in Diary of a Japanese Visit (1904) and ‘Report of Mining Study in Japan’ (1905). In 1872, the first Chinese students had been sent to be educated in the US. Xu was appointed Chinese Consul-General at San Francisco in 1908 and established the first Chinese school in America.

Following a ‘self-strengthening’ period when modern military technology was introduced, Japan’s victory forced the Manchus to form the ‘New Army’ to bolster Chinese defences. Believing the country was on the verge of collapse, the scramble for foreign concessions accelerated in 1898. It ignited hostile reactions. The Boxer Uprising, a popular ‘anti-foreign’ movement erupted after what was seen as half a century’s humiliation and took on national proportions. Strong nationalist feelings had also been aroused in Guangdong.  In 1905, Dr Sun Yat-sen (1866 -1925) a Cantonese, founded the Tongmenghui, ‘Chinese United League’ in Tokyo to overthrow Manchu rule. Its decline was exacerbated by the Empress Dowager’s death in 1908. In the interim, Chinese revolutionary groups allied with Sun’s republican movement went from strength to strength. In October 1911, the Wuchang rebellion instigated by a mutiny in the New Army, left almost every province declaring itself independent of Manchu rule. The court approached General Yuan Shikai to quell the uprising. Sun, returned to China and offered him the presidency if he secured the emperor’s abdication. This he did but monopolised power, with increasingly imperial ambitions. In the chaos following his death in 1916, the country degenerated into warlord regimes.

Guangzhou was the cradle of the revolution. The fifth Xu generation born between the 1880s and 1890s contributed to Republican China by overthrowing the very dynasty upheld by their forefathers. When the Chinese Republic was proclaimed in 1912, Xu Chonghao (1885-1959) and Xu Chongzhi (1887-1965) became military men under Sun Yat-sen. Chonghao who had joined the New Army, was a rebel who recaptured Nanjing. He took control of the strategic Hankou-Canton Railway and was adviser to the Guangdong Army when Sun was based in Guangzhou in 1918-1920. His cousin, Chongzhi educated in a Japanese military institution, secretly joined the Tongmenghui and later played a vital role as Commander-in-Chief of the Guangdong Army. However both were implicated in the 1925 assassination – in Guangzhou – of Liao Zhongkai, the Finance Minister, a staunch supporter of Sun’s alliance with the Soviet Union. They stepped down. Chonghao took up civil positions and remained in Shanghai after 1949; Chongzhi left for the US and eventually retired to Hong Kong.

Two other Xu’s of the same generation were radicals. Xu Zhuo (1902-1934), the first communist, was a revolutionary martyr. His cousin, Xu Guangping (1898-1968) was an emancipated ‘new age’ woman. Born in Guangzhou, she headed north to Tianjin to be a teacher, becoming a leading student activist of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Articles she wrote criticising Chinese feudalism brought her into contact with the literary giant Lu Xun (1881-1936). Their paths crossed when he descended on Guangzhou, where she was his Cantonese interpreter. They were married in 1927, Guangping remaining a life-long defender of women’s rights.

By the sixth Xu generation, the world was a different place. The Xu’s were dispersed. Those who remained in the country after 1949 became outstanding scientists serving the new China. Xu Xizuan (1913-1999), an aeronautical engineer, pioneered its fledgling aviation industry. His cousin, Xizhen (1928-) contributed to the development of Chinese missile technology. Others who migrated to Hong Kong where they were known by the Cantonese surname, Hui, placed public service and education first as did their ancestors, making them an intrinsic part of Guangzhou history.

YVONNE TAN

Virtuous Heritage: Xu Family of Guangzhou - Mandarins, Revolutionaries, Educators and Scientists is at the University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 90 Bonham Road, Hong Kong until 26 February, www.hku.hk/hkumag