Reflections of Early China: Décor, Pictographs, and Pictorial Inscriptions by Xiaoneng Yang is an ambitious study that attempts to define the relationship between “pictorial” writing and pictorial imagery from early China, which is characterized as the late Neolithic through early Western Zhou periods, ca. 3000–1000 B.C.E. The author’s primary interest in this book is neither art-historical nor aesthetic, but rather historical and epigraphic. His main goal is to identify the significance of zu hui, or clan signs, that are inscribed into Shang and early Western Zhou bronzes. To Yang these “signs,” sometimes in the image of animals, body parts, weapons, tools, and other concrete objects, appear to be something else, perhaps “pictographs,” but also possibly “pictorial inscriptions.” Because of the uniquely descriptive and thus pictorial nature of many early Chinese graphs, Yang makes comparison with pictorial images of the same time periods.

In 1954 Guo Moruo identified more than one thousand pictorial graphs inscribed on late Shang and early Western Zhou ritual bronzes as “clan signs” (17–18). In order to dispel the notion that these were not clan signs but rather some sort of pictorial language and picture, Yang begins his mammoth study with introductory chapters (Part I, Chapters 1–2) that lists previous scholarship on pictographic and decorative inquiries. In Part II (Chapters 3–4) he considers possible sources of bronze décor, pictographs, and pictorial inscriptions, and in Part III (Chapter 5), specific types of what he calls “pictorial inscriptions,” one of which is dragon and tortoise profiles depicted on the underside of ritual bronze vessels. In Part IV (Chapters 6–7) Yang samples what he considers the general, broad meaning of “bronze pictographs” and “bronze décor.” Here Yang states that "these ‘patterns’ are actually a medium of a new type that falls between inscriptions and décor. I have called them “pictorial inscriptions” because they resemble pictures but perform inscriptional functions" (105).

The subject is heroic in scope and of great interest to early China specialists and lay readers alike. Any one of us who has been in contact with early Chinese art is fascinated by the omnipresent animal and related mythic imagery depicted in relief on bronze vessels in the late Shang and early Western Zhou periods, the height of Bronze Age China. The problem, however, is that the entire book is marred by a lack of analysis and focus; there is no clear-cut differentiation, definition, and follow-through analyses of pictorial graph, pictorial inscription, or pictorial décor. There is rather constant description and enumeration of qualities or characteristics that the author thinks are important to the study of décor or graph. The author is timid about taking a position, and as a consequence the text is gobbledygook. For example, in the first paragraph of Chapter 6, “Contexts and Assignments of Bronze Pictographs,” the author writes:

In the following paragraphs and pages of Chapter 6, we are provided with “Evidence from Archaeology” (136–41), which is a list of fourteen points he considers evidence for the contexts and assignments of bronze “pictographs.” The list contains mostly descriptions of well-known and published late Shang and early Western Zhou excavated sites with bronzes inscribed with clan emblems (which Yang sometimes calls bronze pictographs). Based on this descriptive list, he concludes:

What does this disclaimer mean? He follows with a discussion of zu, the Chinese graph usually translated “tribe” or “clan,” which first appears in oracle bone inscriptions of late Shang date. He makes the following point:

After a brief thinking-out-loud discussion of certain Chinese classical references and monographic studies of Shang and Zhou families and clans, he concludes:

It appears that we are back to square one: Bronze “pictorial graphs” are not clan insignia. Exactly why not, and, if not, then what are they? We are not told in the subsequent pages of this chapter. The latter pages review various graphs that possibly constitute bronze “pictorial graphs,” such as “wu animal spirits,” ya-shaped graphs, divination graphs, and the ce-scribe graph. There is in fact no conclusion, only an awkward paragraph entitled “Prevailing Pictographs,” which refers to four “clan emblems” that appear on ritual bronzes distributed from Beijing in Hebei province to Luoyang in Henan and Baoji in Shaanxi. Again, the author concludes negatively and impressionistically:

The book is filled with awkward and tentative views with little analysis and definition. Terminology is also problematic, as represented by the frequent use of “pictograph” and by the use of “paradigm” to mean “example” rather than “model” or “standard” (see, for example, pages 100 and 135). It is clear that the author is not happy with the interpretation that the one thousand or more pictographic emblems inscribed on late Shang and early Western Zhou bronzes are clan insignia. But he offers no alternative interpretation or theory.

Similarly, in the concluding paragraph of his interpretation of “pictorial inscriptions” (115), Yang continues to be evasive and disclamatory. He identifies “pictorial inscriptions” as “An Unrecognized Medium of a New Type” (105). Then, under “Definition of the Pictorial Inscription,” he makes a list of nine points that he considers relevant. The base motifs on ritual bronzes that are the subject of his pictorial inscriptions are mostly profile images of aquatic dragons and tortoises (see Appendix 5.1). Yang concludes:

He never defines what “both décor and pictograph” mean, although he frequently offers his impressions. For example, he writes further:

What the author calls “pictorial inscriptions” are not necessarily pictorially unique, nor are they inscribed, as he claims. They are cast mostly in raised-line relief on the bottom surfaces of vessels. Inscriptions usually refer to written graphs and dedications that appear inscribed as sunken relief elsewhere on the same ritual vessel. Why these bottom images are singled out in contradistinction to other graphic pictures of dragons and tortoises elsewhere in bronze imagery is never clarified. Nor does Yang compare these vessel-bottom images with dragon or tortoise imagery elsewhere on bronze vessels or elsewhere on ritual paraphernalia. Thus, his discovery of the “pictorial inscription” lacks corroborative basis or significance. Graphs for dragon and tortoise in Shang bone inscriptions are pictorially comparable to the images on the bottoms of bronze vessels, but other graphs in Shang bone inscriptions are comparable with bronze vessel images as well, particularly in the analogy of graphs with hunted animals in mask imagery on bronzes, as I have thoroughly discussed elsewhere in several lengthy publications (E. Childs-Johnson, “The Metamorphic Image: A Predominant Theme in Shang Ritual Art,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 70 [l998]: 5–171; "Metamorphic Imagery in Early Chinese Art, " Kaikodo Journal [February 1998]: 30–51; and “The Ghost Head Mask and Metamorphic Shang Imagery,” Early China 20 (1995): 79–92). Yang’s views are hasty and undigested, disconnected and unfocused. He does not comprehensively review art-historical and graphic data, nor does he even consider belief systems that may help in understanding the relationship between pictorial graphs and pictorial imagery.

The author’s approach is cumulative in collecting inscriptional and archaeological data rather than in analyzing it or theorizing from it. His text is richly illustrated, and if there is a strength to this book it is in the provision of carefully assembled and clearly presented graphic figures, charts, and tables. It is helpful, for example, to have a current table reviewing radiocarbon dates and approximate sequences of prehistoric cultures, as provided in Appendix E.I. Comparably useful tables and maps include the distribution of Shang fang states of oracle-bone periods I–V (figs. 376–377); the distribution map of Shang culture (fig. 378); Yang’s map of the distribution of Ordos-influenced cultures (fig. 370), and the tables of pictographs and inscriptions from specific Western Zhou cemeteries (Tables A6.3–4).

Yang’s text is not designed for lay usage, nor is it recommended for use by those specialists familiar with Chinese archaeology and ancient scripts. Although it is never clear what the author means by his discussion of “pictographic study” in Chapters 1 and 2, the review of Song through twentieth-century scholarship on bronze inscriptions is useful for those without training in historiography and historical texts. Theory and analysis aside, the author’s tables and charts may also be handy for the specialist in early Chinese script and archaeology.