Along the Alpine Road: Encounters between the Sichuan Basin and the Wei River Valley in Material Culture

The Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley presents a talk with Jay Xu from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Speaker: Jay Xu, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

This lecture presents a story seldom told in Qin’s history: about the Sichuan Basin, lying south of the Qin domain in the Wei River valley. Sichuan was a land richly endowed with natural resources, economic products, and manpower. Communication between the two lands was legendary for its difficulty, with two mountain ranges presenting formidable barriers. Despite the harsh terrain, the Qin army managed to invade and conquer the Sichuan Basin in 316 BCE via alpine roads hewn on steep mountainsides. The success provided the Qin with new routes to attack an arch rival, the kingdom of Chu, and a large laboratory and supply base in its quest to establish a unified empire. The Sichuan invasion in 316 BCE therefore constituted a signature moment in the history of China, yet it is far less emphasized in the general story of Qin’s unification of China compared to its conquest of the six major kingdoms. The present lecture examines the archaeological record of interactions between the Sichuan Basin and the Wei River valley in the early Bronze Age as well as the time before and after 316 BCE, and discusses their expressions in material culture.