The horse found beneath Leitai

The bronze horse is displayed in the Gansu Provincial Museum’s Silk Road Civilization gallery. Its head lifts, three hooves leave the ground, and the remaining hoof rests on a small bird. The pose concentrates the sculpture’s weight into one point and gives the figure its forward motion. It is widely known as the Flying Horse of Gansu, though museum writing describes the object beneath the hoof simply as a bird. The figure was excavated in 1969 from a tomb beneath Leitai in Wuwei and later became an emblem of Chinese tourism.

Leitai is a raised terrace in Liangzhou District. A temple dedicated to the thunder god was built above the Han tombs, giving the place its name and its layered character: archaeological burial below, later religious use above. Provincial heritage materials say the tomb occupant has not been securely identified. Excavations in 1969 and 1996 revealed two large brick tombs. The first contained the horse, hundreds of other objects and a large quantity of coins. The bronze procession figures associated with the site belong to the wider tomb assemblage; the famous horse is one object within that burial context.

Wuwei was an important Han-era center in the Hexi Corridor. In later centuries Liangzhou became a political center for several Liang regimes during the Sixteen Kingdoms period. The Eastern Han tomb beneath Leitai belongs to a later layer of that history. Its bronze horse traveled from the burial ground to the Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou, where it is now displayed; the terrace at Leitai preserves the place where archaeologists found it.