Grapes, Tartlets and Dumplings: Foods from the Astana Cemetery, China
The British Museum exhibition Silk Roads (26 September 2024 to 23 February 2025) explores connections across Afro-Eurasia in the period from 500 to 1000 CE. One of the displays in the exhibition features remarkably well-preserved food items from the Astana Cemetery near Turpan, including grapes and small baked goods now in the British Museum as part of the Stein collection. This talk will examine these examples and others from the same site in their burial context and consider what they may reveal about connections along the eastern Silk Roads.
This lecture is generously sponsored by Sotheby’s.
Speaker
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Luk Yu-PingBasil Gray Curator: Chinese Paintings, Prints and Central Asian Collections, British MuseumDr Luk Yu-ping is the Basil Gray Curator: Chinese Paintings, Prints and Central Asian Collections at the British Museum. Previously, she was Curator (China) at the V&A, Project Curator of the British Museum exhibition Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, and Assistant Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
She received her PhD at the University of Oxford. Her recent research focuses on paintings from the ‘Library Cave’, Dunhuang. She is co-curator of the British Museum Silk Roads exhibition and co-author of its accompanying book.
