The Gansu Provincial Museum is one of the largest museums in western China, featuring many Chinese artifacts from the Silk Road, an ancient trade route between China and Europe. This museum is a must see if you ever visit Lanzhou.

Like any other museum, you usually end up at the gift shop, where you can buy souvenirs and special things to remember your time there. As we walked towards the gift shop, there was this huge plush creature, inviting you to take a pose with it. It looked like a dinosaur to me. At the gift shop, similar looking bright green toys were being sold. “What were they?” I wondered. They looked like a sad attempt at creating something that was supposed to be cute. What was most strange of all, was the Angry Bird looking bird at the bottom of one of its feet. If not for that, I was thinking it was either the Loch Ness monster or Puff the Magic Dragon. There were two versions of the toy, one with arms outstretched, and one that was shaped more realistically like a four legged animal. Still, I didn’t get it at all. Why was this odd looking plush toy being sold here? I left the museum, perplexed and wondering if I had missed something.

It wasn’t until weeks later, when I was researching one of the most important artifacts of the museum that I finally discovered what it was. It was the flying horse of Gansu, only the most famous artifact in the whole entire museum! I should have known – horse with a bird beneath one hoof! The first plush, I didn’t even recognize as a horse, but the second version should have given it away. I guess I was just so thrown off by the bird’s resemblance to the Angry Bird bird, lol!

Indeed this toy, which came out last summer around the time that we had just arrived in China, had become a viral sensation. DouYin (China’s TikTok) videos went viral. By the second day it hit the online market, 6,000 of them were sold. In 3 months, there were more than 100,000 sold. There were even reports of people buying them up by the truckloads. This comedic version of the flying horse was well received by locals because all children in China learn about this flying horse on a bird in school. This 2000 year old artifact is arguably one of the most important cultural artifacts in all of China. It even became the symbol of China’s Tourism several decades ago.

Though I was less than impressed with this plush toy when I first saw it, the actual flying horse artifact inside the museum did leave a deep impression on me. First of all, I love horses, almost more than I love dogs, and only because I revere their great size and strength. The horse figurine itself also had so much character. The mouth was open, as if it were neighing and the whole shape of the body, with its neck turned and legs lifted exuded wild passionate energy. The horse stood with a single hoof on a bird below, with the bird’s head turned back as if it were surprised by something stepping on its back. The fact that this bronze horse, weighing over 7 kilograms, could balance on this small bird underneath it showed skill in craftsmanship.

Lastly, the write up about this horse was fantastic. Here is the Baidu translation:

The biggest reason why this artifact moved me so much was because, as the translation says, it is a symbol for cultural exchange between East and West. This horse mainly resembles the foreign Ferghana horse, brought to China for its unique strengths and ability to compete against the horses of China’s enemy, the Huns from the north. (Recall the movie, “Mulan”?) It became mythically known as The Heavenly Horse, and writings depict it as able to fly faster than a bird and to sweat blood from their great vigor. They had not only made their home in China, but helped China to become a victorious nation. As someone who just recently moved to China, unsure of my place and well aware of my own “foreign-ness”, this is especially meaningful to me.

And so, I returned to the museum and purchased the plush toy that I had originally overlooked and deemed a creation fail. Now, it will remind me to have a lighthearted attitude towards myself as an awkward foreigner and to do my best to put my skills to use here.