This is the legendary interlaced dragon quietly guarding the large “lei” for more than three thousand years. Lei is a large wine and ritual vessel in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. This bronze covered lei with a rolling kui-dragon and interlaced dragons was unearthed from Beidong Village, Kazuo Mongolian Autonomous County, Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province.
Its unique shape, exquisite craftsmanship and intactness are far above similar ones made in the same period. It mainly features bas-relief, combined with the detailed design, producing a strong stereoscopic sense.
The body of the lei is intricately decorated and divided into four layers.
The first layer is the top of the cover, on which a horned dragon curls up and seems to leap up at any time, like a lizard. On the top of the cover, delicately engraved are several cicadas, facing the dragon’s chest and abdomen. Therefore, the dragon is aptly called “a dragon that eats cicadas”.
The second layer is the shoulder position, where bas-relief with simplified kui-dragon design is used. Kui-dragon, an ancient divine beast, resembles a dragon, and the kui-dragon design on the bronzeware builds up the image of a monster with an open mouth and a curled tail.
The third layer is the abdomen, which is decorated with a beast-mask design.
The fourth layer is the ring foot, which is encircled with the small and hornless interlaced dragon pattern.
There are beast-shaped ears on both sides of the shoulder of the bronze covered lei, and a ring is placed inside the beast-shaped ears, called the “beast-shaped ears holding a ring”.
Made from an extremely wide variety of materials and with outstanding craftsmanship, it is a rare round bronze wine vessel. In addition, there are square ones, such as “Min Fanglei”, known as “the King of Fanglei”.
This kind of bronze wine vessels exclusive to the nobles appeared in the Shang Dynasty when wine drinking was very popular, began to decline in the Western Zhou Dynasty when the official prohibition of alcohol was enacted, and gradually disappeared in the late Warring States Period leaving us with historical allusions such as “stop fighting for a truce after finishing drinking wine in a lei”, and “King of Liang State in Western Han Dynasty contends for a bronze lei”.
In addition to the lei unearthed in Kazuo County, Liaoning Province, the leis of the same style have also been found in Pengxian County, Sichuan Province and Suixian County, Hubei Province. These four bronze covered leis with interlaced dragons excavated in three places are very similar. They were all cast in the same period of the Western Zhou Dynasty. From the perspective of their decorative style and casting technology, they should be the products of China’s Central Plain culture at that time.
In Liaoning, Sichuan and Hubei Provinces, the appearance of leis of the same style indicates that the bronze culture of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties had spread over the vast land of China. As far back as two or three thousand years ago, cultural exchanges between the North and the South in ancient China were quite frequent and close.
