#eastern wei

[wuqiannianlishi]

Dàtóng 大同市 dressed in snow, evoking the image of the ancient capital of Píngchéng 平城 that it now sits atop of.

Píngchéng was the capital of Wèi for nearly 100 years, serving as the longest lasting capital of the state. It is located today in modern day Shānxī 山西.

The song featured in the tiktok was from the popular C-Drama 'The Princess Weiyoung'.

[youngjaelee]

Stele Commissioned by Helian Ziyue (赫蓮子悅) and a Devotional Society of Five Hundred Individuals

Metropolitan Museum of Art, China

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 206

A decisive episode from the Sutra on the Discourse of Vimalakirti is given dramatic and complex treatment on the upper half of this stele. The scene (a debate) takes place in a windblown landscape, as indicated by the trees at center and in the background. Vimalakirti (Weimo) sits in a curtained and tasseled pavilion at right, attended by fourteen figures; Manjushri (Wenshu) is accompanied by thirty attendants. Standing to either side of the two trees at center are the monk Shariputra and a female figure, who together represent the scene's most dramatic moment:

Shariputra transforms himself into a woman and then changes back to his original form to demonstrate the impermanence and irrelevance of gender or any other state of being—one of the main points of the sutra. This is also one of the many moments in which the learned Vimalakirti trounces the Bodhisattva of Wisdom.

Period: Eastern Wei dynasty (534–550)

Date: dated 533–43

Culture: China

Medium: Limestone

Dimensions: H. 121 1/4 in. (308 cm); W. 44 1/4 in. (112.4 cm); D. 12 in. (30.5 cm)

Classification: Sculpture

Object Number:  29.72