A Center on the Border: Migration and Artistic Innovation of Fifth-Century Pingcheng, China

Located only 25km south of the Great Wall, the city of Pingcheng is situated in the border zone between nomadic steppes and agricultural farmlands. In 398 CE, Pingcheng was designated as the capital of the Northern Wei dynasty, a regime established by the Tabgatch people of a nomadic background. The construction of a new center on the borderline was a crucial moment for the ethnic and cultural landscape of North China and Eastern Eurasia, since it tore down the boundary between steppe nomads and sedentary Chinese. From the end of the fourth century onward, Pingcheng, as both the center and the border, served as the merging place of people, things, and ideas. Multiple waves of immigrants arrived at Pingcheng from the steppes in the north, the Korean Peninsula in the northeast, Central Asia in the west, and the region ruled by Han Chinese in the south, creating a highly diverse demography and a fertile environment for artistic creation.

This paper focuses on a new formula of funerary portraiture developed in fifth-century Pingcheng. I argue that the idealized image of the dead is a syncretic scheme--appropriating the Han Chinese model, adding nomadic elements, and making a reference to Buddhist icons. The formation of the new pictorial formula was related to the movement of people, especially artisans, to the capital. This new portrait model was adopted by tomb occupants of different ethnic backgrounds, thus becoming a shared visual rhetoric to denote the status among Pingcheng residents.