As archaeologists gingerly opened a boat-shaped coffin wrapped
tightly with an ox hide, a smiling face of a young woman welcomed
the dumbfounded discoverers.
"She's so beautiful!" gushed Idelisi Abuduresule, head of the
Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, who led the
excavation deep inside the Lop Nur Desert in Northwest China's
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 2003.
It was truly a wonder because the smile came from 3,800 years
ago. Wearing a pointed red woollen hat, the mummy of the young
woman was so well preserved, her eyelashes were long and upright.
It seemed she had just fallen asleep.
Archaeologists named her "Princess Xiaohe." Xiaohe (Small River)
was where Swedish scholar Folke Bergman (1902-46) first encountered
the mysterious mummies in a sand dune 175 kilometres away from the
ruins of the ancient Loulan Kingdom in the summer of 1934.
But nobody could find the site until some 70 years later. After
their excavation, Chinese scholars found "Princess Xiaohe" and her
fellow kinsmen to be descendants of ancient people who originated
from the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
This rediscovery was listed as one of the nation's top 10
archaeological findings in 2003.
The story of "Princess Xiaohe" was the focus of the first
instalment of "The New Silk Road" a 10-part documentary, which
debuted on prime time at Channel-1 of China Central Television
(CCTV) on March 10.
The show comes as a fruit of another cooperation between CCTV
and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) since their unprecedented
expedition into the Silk Road 26 years ago.
In 1980, the Sino-Japanese exploration resulted in a documentary
called "The Silk Road." It was the first time that the mysterious
western parts of the country were brought to the common audience by
cameras. The documentary made a big stir in and outside China.
The two organizations came together again in 2003 to make an
updated version. Although the two teams covered roughly the same
routes, the two finished versions are quite different. NHK already
aired its documentary this January.
"We are different in our perspectives," said Wei Dajun, general
director of the CCTV team. "The Japanese team focused more on the
new look of the Silk Road, the lives of the common people and the
cultural aspects, while the Chinese team paid more attention to the
history and culture of the Silk Road, digging behind the
ruins."
When filming the Dunhuang Grottoes in Northwest China's Gansu
Province, for example, the Chinese team cared more about the
preservation of the precious frescoes, while the Japanese team went
to the local market and asked about the price of vegetables.
It took the 350 people in the Chinese and Japanese teams two
years to prepare and finish shooting at 10 sites along the Silk
Road such as Dunhuang and Loulan.
According to Wei, the total investment for their joint project
exceeded 30 million yuan (US$3.7 million). CCTV and NHK provided 10
million yuan (US$1.2 million) each, with the rest from
advertisers.
Weeks before the CCTV documentary was aired, many media reports
had hailed it as setting a new standard of making documentaries in
the country in terms of both techniques and concepts.
Technologically speaking, this is a fair claim.
The series combines several shooting methods to create an
overwhelming sense of realism cutting-edge aerial shooting,
low-flying shooting from a motor paraglider to capture a vast
expanse of desert, and filming of cultural assets using a
state-of-the-art high-quality camera.
By employing various directing methods using the latest digital
imaging technology and historical re-enactments, the series brings
back the history of the rise and fall of the ancient route, and the
cultural fusion buried in the desert.
"Princess Xiaohe" was reenacted by a beautiful young woman
walking amid a golden wheat field.
A small grass-made basket containing wheat seeds was found
beside every mummy at the Xiaohe cemetery. Archaeologists believe
the people who created the cemetery must have lived on planting
wheat and raising sheep.
The Bezeklik Grottoes of the Turpan Basin in Xinjiang thrived in
the 11th century but was looted by several foreign archaeological
teams in the early 1900s. Its splendid frescoes are now treasured
in a number of museums across the world.
The documentary team went to those museums and filmed the
remnants of the cultural relics. But what is more satisfying for
the audience is the digitalized reconstruction of the frescoes at
their original places.
With the help of modern technology, people could see the
intricate details of the dresses, expressions and colours of
Sakyamuni Buddha and his disciples, which couldn't be pieced back
again in reality.
But this documentary could have been better in many ways.
The directors seem to assume that everyone watching their show
ought to have a thorough understanding of the various ethnic
cultures, which once thrived and disappeared around the Silk
Road.
The route of the Silk Road, for example, has been roughly
rendered on a miniature model dotted with tiny names. The model
used repeatedly in the show, however, still doesn't help the
baffled audience find out the exact location of the subject in
question.
The documentary is like a banquet with too many courses. Both
the audience and the directors need a lot more time to digest the
complex information embodied by this unique link between cultures
through time and space.
(China Daily March 16, 2006)
