For this issue, which features the southwestern provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan in China, we have invited Liu Yang, Chair of Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, to be the guest editor. The discoveries at Sanxingdui in Sichuan continue to captivate with their fantastical and otherworldly bronzes. The latest excavations from 2020 to 2022 of six pits near the original site, dating to the 12th-11th centuries BCE, reveal strange animal figures, anthropomorphic figures, human–animal hybrids, and large composite works. All six pits were sacrificial in nature, used in rituals performed on behalf of the rulers of the Shu kingdom. We describe each pit and its contents in detail, and link them to the nearby Jinsha site, which likely succeeded Sanxingdui as a new capital. Additionally, we discuss the casting methods used for the Sanxingdui bronzes, concluding that the bronzes were produced through multi-part casting and casting-welding. In Yunnan province, the Shizhaishan culture, also known as Dian culture, spanned from approximately the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE. This sophisticated bronze culture, incorporating influences from surrounding regions, developed a distinctive and original style.

We include two articles on Chinese paintings. The first compares Portrait of a Qing Dynasty Court Lady in the Cincinnati Art Museum with the Twelve Beauties of Prince Yinzhen in the Palace Museum, Beijing, and posits that the former is a painting by Giuseppe Castiglione of Lady Nian, a consort of Prince Yinzhen. The second article argues that the mid-13th century Chan Master Riding a Mule in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, previously owned by John M. Crawford Jr (1913–88), was likely not created by Wuzhun, but rather by another Southern Song dynasty painter. The painting then travelled to Japan, where it was inscribed by a local calligrapher, demonstrating how paintings of this period were transformed to meet the varying demands of their viewers.

One of my favourite objects in a museum is a nephrite wine vessel in the Calouste Gulbenkian collection, Lisbon, which was once in the possession of not just one, but three, illustrious owners: Ulugh Beg (1394–1449), Emperor Jahangir (1569–1627), and Shah Jahan (1592–1666). We show how this object was used to reconcile conflicting identities as part of a larger self-fashioning strategy.

We present the winning essay of the second edition of the Young Art Writers Award, sponsored by the Susan Chen Foundation. It explores Ming and Qing dynasty birthday hangings, which were commonly given as gifts to elderly recipients to decorate banquet venues.

Three significant donations of batik—a colourful patterned cotton fabric made by resist-dyeing with wax—have been made to the Peranakan Museum in Singapore. We feature an article on the museum’s first exhibition of batiks by three generations of Peranakan women from Pekalongan, Indonesia.

FEATURES

Liu Yang. Otherworldly Forms:The Newly Unearthed Bronze Figures from Sanxingdui 

Ran Honglin.Archaeological Excavation at Sanxingdui:Initial Insights into the Sacrificial Area at Yuanjiayuan 

Su Rongyu and Zhu Yarong. A Glimpse into the Bronze Casting Technology of Sanxingdui

Sun Hua and Liu Xu. Bronzeware of the Shizhaishan Culture 

Richard A. Pegg. Qing Dynasty Border Defence Maps of Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces 

Hou-mei Sung. Portrait of a Qing Dynasty Court Lady 

Yi-bang Li. Chan Master Riding a Mule: Connoisseurship of a Chan Painting through a Social-Historical Lens

Chi-Lynn Lin. Birthday Hangings: Liminal Shields Linking Longevity and Good Death

Petya Andreeva. Jades from the Timurid and Mughal Courts: Recovering a Mongol Past in an Interconnected Afro-Eurasia

Naomi Wang. Batik Making and Artistic Innovation Across Three Generations:

The Oeij Family of Pekalongan

Christine M.E. Guth. A Visit to the Buddhist Sites of Gandharan Pakistan

The Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art