Wengzhong

 Most of the jades in my collection are contemporary pieces by today’s acknowledged master carvers. I hesitate to pay for ancient jades because so many of them are reproductions. I know of plenty of collectors (and national museums) who have cabinets containing fakes. I am not expert enough to tell the difference myself but one of my mentors in China cackles with glee whenever we surf auction catalogues or view famous collections of jade.  He takes delight in pointing out how many are of doubtful origin.

This is a small carving is of Wengzhong, the legendary bodyguard of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang, carved during the Han Dynasty. I believe it to be authentic. It was a gift from a Chinese billionaire after I had helped her son extricate himself from a sticky situation. She plucked it from a cabinet in her own collection in the room she set aside for jade when she was showing me around her home. It was given to me in appreciation for the help I had given her son. Her collection is free of fakes. She didn’t become a billionaire by accident.

Wengzhong carved in the Han Dynasty

Wengzhong has been carved for more than two thousand years and it remains a popular carving today. This one has an interesting history. It was carved in the Han dynasty, using the Han Ba Dao style but it was fashioned from a much older piece of jade from the Hongshan culture. The recarving of ancient jades has been a recurrent theme throughout Chinese history.

The story goes that Wengzhong was not content with just being a bodyguard. He persuaded the emperor to let him lead a campaign against a fearsome tribe threatening the northwestern borders of the empire. It is said he had such prodigious strength that he threw the heavy Chinese spears into the ranks of the enemy to kill them. Until this time, the spear was seen only as a weapon of hand-to-hand combat and was never thrown. According to the myth, he was so effective that the soldiers under his command queued up to hand him their spears to kill the enemy. Legend also has it that at one point, he pulled an enemy general from his horse, killed him, then ripped the horse into pieces with his bare hands and used the pieces to batter his opponents to death. It is said that he was such a terrifying sight the tribesmen believed him invincible and worshipped him as a god.

One version of his legend has it that when he died, the emperor had a statue made in his image and placed at the gates of his palace to protect him even after death. Another story goes that he had twelve huge bronze statues made from the weapons he’d captured from his enemies while creating his empire and placed them on the wall that protected his empire from the marauding tribes as a warning for them to stay away.

The story that I prefer to believe and which might have some basis in truth is the one where huge statues made of bronze were placed along the wall protecting the Qin Empire’s northern border. There is a record of the last one being melted down to be minted into coins sometime after the collapse of the Eastern Han by a general who was short of money to pay his troops.

During the Western Han, Wengzhong was usually carved as a young military officer, but in the later Eastern Han he was carved as an elderly civic dignitary. Somehow, over time, he may have morphed into one of the statues that guarded the Spirit Way to the tombs of later emperors. Wengzhong also appears in Vietnamese legends, which indicates he must have made quite an impression during his lifetime more than two thousand years ago. Learn more about jade on my website www.jadefiend.com