Religion and the Arts 20 (2016) 59–91 RELIGION and the ARTS brill.com/rart Realms Beyond Half-Open Doors in Chinese Funerary Art Fei Deng Fudan University Abstract This article explores a mysterious but well-studied pictorial subject in Chinese visual art, namely the half-open door. The scene often shows a female figure standing in or emerging from the middle of two door-leaves, suggesting a path or an access to a certain space and also indicating a view incompatible with what the viewer has already seen. This pictorial theme frequently adorns stone sarcophagi and tomb walls in northern China from the late eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. By examining the forms and meanings of the motif, this study attempts to demonstrate the ways in which the half- open door was employed in funerary art and helped people to visualize prevailing ideas about the afterlife. Keywords Song and Jin periods – northern China – funerary art – half-open door – heavenly worlds Doorways constructed with stone or bricks are often seen in decorated tombs in northern China during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Decorated tombs are here defined as tombs that are adorned with elaborate facades in imitation of wooden architecture and with various indoor scenes on the tomb walls. In general, the tombs consist of a stepped path and a single or sometimes double burial chambers of varying sizes and layouts. Wooden architectural elements such as pillars, bracket sets, and eaves are simulated in brick and sometimes enhanced with color. The pictorial scenes in the tombs usually include ban- quets, indoor scenes, filial stories, and household furnishings.1 The decoration 1 In the last three decades, an increasing number of studies have discussed the materials. Most © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/15685292-02001004 60 deng may be entirely painted or constructed of bricks or may be a combination of various techniques. This style of tomb belongs to a continuous tradition of tombs decorated as aboveground timber-frame buildings.2 In such a tomb at Baisha in Henan, the tomb chamber is built entirely in brick, with reliefs carved into the brick presenting columns, beams, and brackets.3 The north wall has a brick-constructed half-open door. One leaf is ajar, with a sculpted figure of a woman standing in the aperture (fig. 1). The door is thus half-empty and half- solid. The woman appears to be peering out from the half-open door. Does she invite a viewer in, or allow the tomb occupants to enter the space outside the door? This scene is “highly suggestive and at the same time ambiguous” (Lin 27–28). This motif of half-open doors was common in burials during the Northern Song (960–1127), Liao (915–1125), Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties. Half-open doors are often constructed on the back wall (north wall) in the tombs, showing the door leaves partially opened, with a female figure often presented standing in the middle of two leaves. Although it is unclear as to whether the woman is about to open the door or close it, the whole scene draws the viewer’s gaze to engage with this female figure. This scene raises questions: What is the role of this mysterious woman in burials? What does this pictorial theme symbolize? And where was the half-open doorway thought to lead? These issues are not only essential in understanding the meanings of this particular subject, but also elucidate the ways in which people visualized ideas about life after death in the tomb space. For this purpose, the present study focuses on half-open doors in funerary contexts and discusses how this motif indicates ideas relating to the afterlife. studies about decorated tombs have focused on two major areas. First, many works discuss the geographic distribution and periodization of these tombs. Archaeological typology is the most common method used in these discussions. By applying this method, scholars have built up relative dating and chronological sequences for these tombs. Second, scholars also emphasize individual pictorial subjects in tombs. The major scenes in decorated tombs, such as images of tomb occupants at a banquet table, representations of theatrical performances, pictures of filial piety stories, and scenes of a woman standing in a half-open doorway, have all been discussed. For important studies, see Laing, “Patterns and Problems in Later Chinese Tomb Decoration” 3–20; Kuhn; Zhao 41–50; Qin 123–165; Li, “Kongjian luoji yu shijue yiwei” 329–362; Lin 3–36. 2 For a discussion of the tradition of using wooden architectural elements in Chinese burials, see Lin 3–18. 3 For the references to the Baisha tombs, see Su. Religion and the Arts 20 (2016) 59–91 realms beyond 61 i Doorways in Burials The idea of building and equipping tombs as actual dwellings developed in early China.4 Tombs present distinct spaces with distinct functions, both with actual physical spaces and with objects in them. Many burials of the Song, Liao, and Jin periods continued to be designed like houses in life, and were decorated with great attention to architectural detail and household setting. The whole tomb structure and decoration appear to provide a space in which the dead can dwell. For example, in a Song tomb found at Dengfeng, Henan, a brick door and two lattice windows as well as household furnishings are carved in detail. Architectural elements such as the bracket sets on the upper part of the tomb walls are made by square bricks and painted with color (Peng, Yu, and Yang 28–34). These features were used to create an underground building. Doorways, therefore, were thought to be essential in the tomb space. Several major types of doors appear.5 One type is comprised of ornate lattice doors, which appear on the east and west or sometimes each side of the tomb walls. This kind of door is usually divided into two vertical sections: the upper part is filled with a simple lattice design, and the lower one is sometimes decorated with floral patterns (fig. 2). They may indicate the doors of dwellings seen from a courtyard at the center of a house.6 Another representative type is a false two-leaf door, which is often constructed on the north wall in tombs. This form became popular from the eleventh century onwards. In a Song tomb found at Dengfeng, for instance, a two-leaf brick door with basic elements such as the door lintel and doorjambs 4 From the sixth century bce, the simple stepped pit of the early tomb type developed into comprised tombs. In comprised tombs, separate sections of rooms represent different func- tions, such as the Mancheng Han tomb in Hebei. People of the time seem to have seen these tombs as real dwellings. Such tendencies attained a certain degree of standardization in the middle Han period, with depictions of buildings, granaries, stoves, and wells and so forth. 5 In order to make the following arguments clear, according to the positions that doors appear in tombs, I here put them into two major categories: lattice doors and two-leaf doors. In most cases, two-leaf doors or half-open doors are often constructed on the north wall, while lattice ones may appear on the east, west or any other walls. A specific choice may have reflected different meanings of the two kinds of doors, as well as the preferences of the artisan or the patron. I have limited myself deliberately to the discussion of two-leaf doors and half-open doors in northern China, referring only occasionally to data concerning Sichuan and Gansu. 6 Lattice doors continued to be employed in the Jin period, notably in the area of present-day Shanxi province, and became more and more elaborate and intricate. For the discussion on Jin lattice doors, see Laing, “Chin ‘Tartar’ Dynasty Material Culture” 78–79. Religion and the Arts 20 (2016) 59–91 62 deng figure 1 Brick-constructed half-open door in the m1 tomb, Baisha, Henan, China, eleventh century courtesy wenwu press appears on the north wall. Ornaments imitating bamboo curtains hung above actual doors are also painted (Zhengzhou kaogusuo 83–86). A variation of the two-leaf door is a half-open door, which shows its leaves partially opened. Intriguingly, a female figure is often presented standing in the middle of the two leaves, offering a more complex subject. Quite a few half-open doors of the Song, Liao, and Jin periods have been excavated.7 Many 7 For a survey of this theme in the Song and Jin burials, see Yi, Dengfeng Heishangou Songmu Religion and the Arts 20 (2016) 59–91 realms beyond 63 figure 2 Bracket sets and lattice doors constructed on the north wall of a Song tomb, Xin’an, Henan, China courtesy luoyang ancient tombs museum, luoyang, henan of them can be seen in decorated tombs in the area of between the Eastern capital Kaifeng and the Western capital Luoyang of the Northern Song period.8 In most of these tombs, the half-open doors are positioned on the north wall, facing the tomb entrances on the south.9 The door leaves are usually depicted opening inwards. They are presented neither fully opened nor fully closed, suggesting a path or access to a certain space beyond the burial chambers. Although the figure standing in the door varies from tomb to tomb, most of them are female. In the m1 tomb at Baisha mentioned earlier, a half-open door is constructed on the north wall. One door leaf is partially open and a sculpted figure of a woman is seen behind the leaf.