Two Scripts on One Stele: Qutan in a Beijing Exhibition

Chinese regular script covers the front of the Rear Hall Imperial Stele replica shown in Beijing’s 2026 exhibition “Highland Silk Road: Light of Qutan.” Tibetan writing occupies its reverse. The two scripts share one monument but a viewer encounters them on separate faces, moving around the stone to see the other text.

The exhibition presented a replica of a monument from Qutan Monastery in Ledu. Its inscription includes the word “China,” according to the exhibition account. The division between front and back makes the stele’s bilingual form visible as a physical arrangement as well as a written record.

Qutan’s architectural precinct contains two imperial steles: the Imperial Stele of Qutan Monastery and the Imperial Stele of the Rear Hall. A specialist’s account places them in the stele-pavilion courtyard and dates the former inscription to 1408. Their freestanding stone forms sit within a formal complex of halls, courtyards and corridors.

The Beijing replica carried one part of that setting into a gallery. There, visitors could look at the script on each face as an object in its own right; at Qutan, the original monument also belongs to the pavilion and the monastery’s history of imperial patronage.