Wine on the Wing

In the reign of Yue in China, so the legend goes, a man named I Ti found out how to make wine. The discovery was ' important enough to show the Emperor's daughter; with small cries of delight, she took it straight to the throne of her father Yue. The Emperor sipped, narrowed his eyes, and poured the wine on the ground saying, "The day will come when this thing will cost someone a kingdom."

Long after Yue, but at the dawn of Chinese history, the Shangs sat on the throne of China (1766-1122 B.C.). They offered wine to their ancestral spirits and to the gods of the air, and poured liba tions to the gods of the earth. What remained, they drank -- it could infuse spirit into even the dullest men. They poured the wine in bronze pots and cups which were shaped to a perfection that perhaps no metal work has equaled since.

Last week 15 newly acquired Shang bronzes went on view in Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum. One of the cups had a tripod base which seemed to stand on tiptoe, and a lid in the shape of a swallow with outstretched wings and tail (see cut). The ambition to drink from the wings of a flying swallow might well have cost someone a kingdom.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.