Master plan for Asian art museum finalized

Publish Date:02/04/2005
Story Type:Arts & Culture;
Byline:Rita Fang

The National Palace Museum (NPM) announced at a Jan. 20 press conference the finalization of the master plan for its new branch museum in southern Taiwan's Taibao City, Chiayi County, scheduled to open in late 2008. In contrast with the NPM in Taipei--arguably the world's premier museum of ancient Chinese art and artifacts--the Taibao museum will focus on the art and culture of Asia in general.

The plan was drawn up over the past year by Canada's Lord Cultural Resources Planning and Management Inc. Founded in 1981, Lord specializes in consultancy regarding the operations and development of cultural exhibition facilities, having participated in more than 1,200 projects in 29 countries. Its previous clients in Asia include the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of the Filipino People and the Saudi Arabian National Museum. It was also the principal planner for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

The nine-volume, 546-page plan covers virtually every aspect of organization of the museum and associated facilities, including exhibition and collection programs, infrastructure and development of the surrounding area. With its completion, coming two months after selection of the architectural design for the museum complex by the U.S. firm Antoine Predock Architect, construction is set to get underway this year, said NPM Director Shih Shou-chien.

The plan characterizes the project as "a museum in a cultural park" of 70 hectares, comprising thematic Asian gardens, a surrounding artificial lake, an outdoor amphitheater, and spaces for holding cultural activities, especially those related to the museum's Asian themes. It also includes a blueprint for the development of commercial zones containing eateries, stores and hotels, to be run by the private sector on a build-operate-transfer or operate-transfer basis.

In addition to a garden for children, the thematic Asian gardens will highlight the Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions and the cultures of South Asia, southern China and Northeast Asia. Their planned spatial layout parallels the historical linkage of geographic regions by trade routes. A guiding principle in planning the museum and cultural park is to represent Asian cultures not as isolated, disassociated entities but as elements in an ever-evolving, organic web of relationships.

The museum itself will have a wide variety of galleries, some for permanent and rotating exhibitions of its own collection, others for special exhibitions of materials on loan from abroad. Shih noted that exhibitions will include Asian artifacts and artworks manifesting Western influence, with the aim of helping museum visitors ask "What is Asia?" from as broad a perspective as possible.

Underlining the dynamic and complex nature of the cultural and historical associations encompassed by Asia, Shih noted that the name originated in Europe, and was adopted by Asian societies as the consequence of the projection of European power beginning in the 17th century. It derives from a Greek word meaning "region of the rising sun," which in turn has roots in the ancient Hebrew and Akkadian languages. Asia may therefore be characterized as a virtual space that transcends static images and superficial geographic definition, he said.

To ensure the Taibao museum's reputation as a world-class repository of cultural heritage, its exhibits will be only of the highest quality, Shih stressed. According to the plan, when the new museum opens, 60 percent of its exhibition items will come from the NPM collection, and 40 percent will consist of borrowed and newly acquired items.

A major impetus for building a museum of Asian arts and culture is the desire to more fully utilize the NPM's vast store of artifacts, many of which originated in, or manifest influences from, locales outside of Han-dominated China. Among items from the NPM collection introduced at the press conference were an 18th-century Tibetan Kanjur Buddhist sutra, a 5th-century statue of the Shakyamuni Buddha and a 15th-century blue-on-white porcelain bowl combining a traditional Chinese lotus pond motif with a gilt curlicue decoration derived from Islamic tradition.

Shih noted that blue-on-white porcelains will be one of the most important categories of exhibits at the Taibao museum, serving to illustrate the fascinating cross-fertilization between Asiatic cultures over the centuries. Comprised mainly of pieces in the NPM collection dating mostly from the 14th to 19th centuries, it will include wares manufactured in West Asia's Islamic societies, Northeast Asia's Japan and Korea, and Southeast Asia's Vietnam and Thailand.

As one of the most popular commodities of trade between locales in Asia in earlier times, they exemplify the exchange of techniques and artistic sensibilities, which influenced even common households, including those in Taiwan.

Other planned exhibits of the new museum will likewise highlight cultural interchange not only between Asian societies but also between those in Asia and other parts of the world.

A major mission of the Taibao museum, Shih indicated, is to enable Taiwanese to reconnect with their Asian roots as a foundation for ongoing cultural innovation. He expressed his hope that the museum will spark greater interest in studying and understanding the larger Asian community of which Taiwan is a member. To that end, besides academic lectures, the museum will sponsor "contextual learning" activities designed to give visitors an intuitional taste of other Asian cultures.

For instance, exhibitions of Buddhist art from India might be intermingled with traditional Indian fabrics and tapestries and supplemented with music, interactive video displays of artifacts and special lighting effects, aimed at creating an atmosphere in which the wider cultural context of Indian Buddhism may be more fully sensed. The frequent use of such multimedia techniques will be one of the ways in which the new museum will be distinguished from the museum in Taipei, Shih explained.

Among the special exhibitions scheduled for 2008-2010 are those spotlighting tea culture throughout Asia, Hindustan jades, religious folk art in Taiwan and ancient Asian arms and armor. It is expected that, in its capacity as one of the three major exhibition centers of the 2008 Taiwan Expo, it will host more than 900,000 visitors in its first year of operation, and that thereafter it will be visited by at least 700,000 patrons annually. The other two expo sites, in Taoyuan and Tainan counties, will focus on technology and ecology, respectively.

The National Palace Museum takes its name from the imperial palace in Beijing. It was founded by the Republic of China government on Oct. 10 national day in 1925, when the Forbidden City and its art treasures were opened up to the public for the first time. It houses all manner of artifacts collected by emperors from the Sung Dynasty (960-1279) to the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911).

The collection was moved several times between palaces in different locales in China until it was transferred to the Forbidden City, built by Emperor Yong Le of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), where it remained for five centuries. During the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the entire collection was moved first to Shanghai and then to Chengdu and Chongqing.

Under the threat of imminent defeat by communist revolutionary forces, all but about 700 of the thousands of crated NPM artifacts were shipped to Taiwan in early 1949. Once it had become apparent that the ROC government would not be able to return to the mainland any time soon, it decided to reopen the museum in Taipei, and today's NPM opened its doors in 1965.

To celebrate its 80-year anniversary, in the summer of 2006 the NPM will hold what Shih described at the press conference as a "once-in-a-lifetime exhibition" of Sung Dynasty materials, many of which have rarely or never before been displayed. The exhibition will also serve to celebrate the soon-to-be completed renovation of the museum's main building.

http://publish.gio.gov.tw/FCJ/current/05020451.html

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www.chinaview.cn 2005-02-03 08:20:55
A feast for eyes this holiday

[image] A mask unearthed in the 3,600-year-old Sanxingdui Ruins in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, is one of the rare treasures on display at the National Museum of China in Beijing.

BEIJING, Feb. 3 -- Art lovers in Beijing are set to enjoy the upcoming Spring Festival with an exhibition of 90 Chinese cultural relics that have been ranked "national treasures."

The artefacts on display at the exhibition, which is on at the National Museum of China until March 31, include the best of relics unearthed in the 3,600-year-old Sanxingdui Ruins and 3,200-year-old Jinsha Ruins in Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Some of the items were used by Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722 in reign) including a delicate calculator and a globe, and ink paintings collected by the Palace Museum, Shanghai Museum and Nanjing Museum are also included at the show.

They are chosen from four exhibitions that travelled to Paris between 2003 and 2004: "The Shu Kingdom," "The Confucius," "Holy Mountains" and "Emperor Kangxi."

Each has been a great success with about 1 million visitors passing through the display at the Paris City Hall, the Musee National des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet, the Versailles Palace Museum and the Grand Palace Museum, said Dong Baohua, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, which organized the shows.

"The show at the Guimet, called 'The Confucius,' attracted a record number of visitors in the history of the museum, which opened to the public in 1882," he noted.

The exhibition in Beijing, a retrospect of the Parisian shows, is divided into four sections.

The famous bronze mask with protruding eyes, unearthed at the Sanxingdui Ruins in 1986, is among the 29 bronze, gold, jade and ivory artifacts included in the first section about the Shu Kingdom.

The kingdom allegedly existed for more than a millennium before the 3rd century BC in today's Sichuan.

It is widely speculated that the mask represented the magical power of Chan Cong, who was in legends the first King of Shu, and also showed the adoration for the sun by ancient residents in the misty, mountainous province.

The second section tells of the life of Confucius (551-479 BC), and how his philosophical thinking, which later developed into Confucianism, has evolved throughout the history and dominated the Chinese's ideological world until challenged by Western philosophies in the late 19th century.

It features the most important relics in the collection of the Shandong Museum and the municipal museum of Qufu, Shandong, where Confucius was born and where his descendants have lived to date.

It includes portraits of Confucius, documents of his teachings, bronzes that were used as ritual vessels at his time, bronze chimes, books, paintings and sculptures that displayed the development of his philosophy in the more than two millenniums after him.

The third section, entitled "Holy Mountains," tells of the evolvement of Chinese landscape painting from its origin in the 3rd century to its breakthroughs in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

It is especially worth a visit for those interested in Chinese ink paintings because of the debut of most of the 19 fragile pieces, which are highly valued in the art community and known to almost all Chinese art lovers.

They include the 13-metre-long scroll "Pines and Cypresses" by Zhu Da (1626-1704) and the "Endless Mountains and Rivers" by monk artist Kun Can (1612-73), which are in the collection of the Shanghai Museum; the 9-metre-long "Landscape of Yangtze River" by Wu Wei (1459-1508) in the collection of the Palace Museum; and masterpieces by such important artists as Ni Zan (1301-74), Shen Zhou (1427-1509) and Wang Shimin (1592-1680).

The fourth section, "Kangxi Emperor" is interesting as it includes swords, guns, ceramics, mathematics books and items of 17th-century cutting edge technologies - a globe and a calculator.

The globe placed in the emperor's study much resembles a modern one. On it one can find major continents on the earth, navigational courses in parts of the Pacific, and sites marked with names such as "Australia," "New Guinea" and "The Great Wall."

The bar-shaped copper calculator has on its surface 12 glass plates, which represent 12 digits. One can make calculations with it when rotating a copper handle.

Meanwhile the National Art Museum of China is to hold an exhibition of Renaissance and Baroque art, on loan from the national collection in France, from February 5 to 20.

The French Government bought the 111 works from private collections in 2003, through a sponsorship of 11 million euros (US$14.3 million) from the retail giant Carrefour Group.

The exhibition, also sponsored by the Carrefour, includes works by such Renaissance masters as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raffael.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-02/03/content_2541533.htm

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Crouching Artists, Hidden Value
Missy Sullivan, The Forbes Collector, 02.01.05, 3:53 PM ET

NEW YORK - When it comes to collecting, Howard Farber always likes to be where everyone else isn't. In 1972 the former New York real estate investor started buying early 20th century American modernist painting, just before artists like Georgia O'Keeffe had become household names. After those works appreciated almost 100-fold in 25 years, Farber got priced out of the market and started looking for a new collecting niche. He alighted upon vintage photography until that market, too, took off. Then he happened into a few galleries in Hong Kong in 1998 and, as he put it, "flipped."

China was still a mysterious place to most Westerners, and its contemporary art even more so. What he saw was an art reflecting the country's dramatic upheavals: the departure of the British colonial regime in Hong Kong; the transition from Communism to a market economy on the mainland; the encroachment of Western culture and the ground-level uncertainty of how China's rich cultural past would inform its future. New Chinese art would not only become his next collecting passion but, five years later, Farber is now advising other collectors interested in this material through his firm, China Avant-Garde.

Describe to me the scope of your collection.

I have maybe 150 works total, by approximately 60 artists. My collection ranges from 1987 to the present, in all media: painting, sculpture, video. Lately I've been buying a lot of contemporary Chinese photography.

What first struck you about this work?

It was just...fresh. It was so many different things, all styles, all media. And not all of it looked "Chinese." Much of the work reflected the artists' reinterpretations of Western art. You have to remember, up until the late 1970s, these artists had never seen any Western art because censorship was so strong. They really started going avant-garde in the late 1980s after Deng Xiao-Ping instituted the "open door" policy in 1979. It was the first time since 1949 that they had experienced Western art and influence, and it was a period of frenetic experimentation.

Were any of these artists known outside of China at this point?

Not really. So there I was, interested in this material, without any place to really read or learn about it. But things started to happen fast. In 1999, the Asia Society in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art co-produced a ground-breaking exhibition called "Inside Out: Contemporary Chinese Art." I went to see it, tracked down the artists and bought half a dozen of the works from the show. Now these works are icons of Chinese contemporary art. If I had waited and thought about it and discussed it, I probably would've lost them. That exhibition really opened the floodgates on this material.

What are some of the important genres or themes you saw in this work?

They are so diverse. Early on, in the late '80s and early '90s, you saw Political Pop, which responded to the consumerism that inundated China during its initial shift to a market economy; Coke and McDonald's had rushed in. You see a lot of Andy Warhol influence. One of the important artists working in that style was Wang Guangyi. I own one of his key works, called The Great Castigation Series: Coca Cola. It's a giant painting, too big for my apartment. It shows a picture of the Chinese Red Guard juxtaposed with the Coke logo. I think of it as the Mona Lisa of Chinese art.

Another genre that emerged in the '80s was called Cynical Realism, exemplified by the works of an artist named Fang Lijun. I have a picture of his of a young man yawning, which has a lot of resonance. It has been described to me as the boredom of the youth of China, where there's no direction, no sense of where the future lies.

You mentioned that you have been collecting Chinese photography lately.

One photographer I like is Wang Qingsong. Right now he's creating really large-scale, billboard-sized color photos--some over 20-feet long--of scenes that resemble Broadway set designs or stills from epic movies. They're complex productions, with maybe 60 people working on them: camera people, models, makeup and lighting folks. I own a smaller-sized piece (only about 6 feet long), one of his battle series scenes where he depicted himself as a "wounded" soldier, bandaged around the head, climbing a battle-scarred hill with other soldiers toward--what else?--the Golden Arches.

I also like Hai Bo. What he does: he found these old family photographs taken from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, in which everyone was wearing Mao jackets; they all looked the same. He used them to create "then-and-now" diptychs--before and after the Cultural Revolution--finding the people from the photos and putting them in new pictures in the same pose with the same expression. One I own, it really gets me, is called Three Sisters. The original picture is from 1973. He found the sisters today, only now there are just two of them. You get that five-second factor when you look at three sisters and see that one is gone.

Special Offer: A study at New York University's Stern School of Business revealed that the art market has outperformed the S&P for the last 50 years. But how do you know the difference between a pretty picture and a good investment? Let The Forbes Collector give you expert guidance.
Which Chinese artists are best known internationally at this point?

There are a few artists who left China in the late 1980s and 1990s and settled in the U.S., who have become superstars. Each of them has gallery and museum shows and books devoted to their work. One is Cai Guo-Qiang, who is best known for outdoor performance pieces involving gunpowder explosions. He did one in Central Park in 2003 called Light Cycle, which illuminated the sky with a 1,000-foot halo of light and fire.

Another is Xu Bing, whose most renowned work, Book from the Sky, is a commentary on the limitations of official language. He created a giant installation made up of 400 beautifully bound books and giant scrolls filled with Chinese-looking "nonsense" characters that resemble Chinese calligraphy, but have no meaning. Wenda Gu is known for an ongoing installation series called the United Nations Project, in which he makes culturally resonant art using human hair from people all over the world.

How have you educated yourself about this art?

I get every book that comes out. The first step was a few overall books on the subject. Now there are starting to be monographs on important artists. And, of course, I go to all the shows. There are Chinese works in every important Biennale and Triennale, the traditional showcases for new art.

Is there a secondary market yet?

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The big auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's are just now starting to put things into their 20th century Chinese sales and to have separate contemporary Asian sales. There was a New York contemporary sale where a photo by Zhan Huan from around 2000 sold for $15,000. I think that price was right on target. But in 2002, a Cai Guo-Qiang seven-panel screen sold at Christie's for $229,500, soaring past its estimate of $30,000 to $40,000. That price reflects his international status. But since these works are mostly selling out of the Hong Kong salesrooms, you really have to know what you're doing. You can't inspect the work. I wanted a large piece by a great artist named Zhang Xiaogang, who is famous for his bloodline series, powerful paintings with children or family members, connected by little red lines. I already own one, but I wanted this one, too, which was estimated between $22,000 and $32,000. I decided I would bid live on the phone, which, because it was in Hong Kong, was in the middle of the night. I prepared my currency conversion chart, and decided that I was willing to bid as high as $70,000. Well, the long and the short of it was that I didn't even get off a bid. I heard the auctioneer say, "We have a lot of interest in this work" and I realized, "I'm dead." It sold for approximately $80,000. The bottom line: I'm sorry I didn't buy it.

How has the market changed since you started collecting?

In general, prices have increased in the last five years because artists are becoming savvier about their careers, starting to get gallery representation and be in international fairs and shows. Their prices had been so undervalued relative to other contemporary works. A few artists whose work I purchased for around $8,000 four years ago sold last year for as much as $40,000. Some works are selling at auction into the six figures now.

But the Chinese contemporary art market is still in its infancy. For a reasonable amount of money you can still buy great works. It's not over. I never want to be the last one in, shut the lights off. In fact, the Chinese people have only just started to collect this art. Right now, most of the market is outside China. It's not a flash in the pan; it's on a slow boil. I believe this art is here to stay.

Where do you buy?

I buy from dealers and some directly from the artist. (I have an office and a person in Beijing.) There are some artists who will only let you buy from the dealer and some you can go to. Every major city around the world now has a gallery that deals in this material.

What other advice would you give collectors interested in this material?

Don't buy some mediocre work to match your décor. I don't believe in decorating with art. Art stands on its own in a room.

Excerpted from The Forbes Collector

http://www.forbes.com/investmentnewsletters/2005/02/02/cz_ms_0202soapbox_inl.html

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(IHT/Asahi: January 28,2005)
IN SIGHT/ GETTING PERSONAL: Female artists not wedded to tradition in life, work
By EDAN CORKILL, Contributing Writer

It's not often that curators reveal their marital status in catalog essays. It's hard to imagine how a treatise on Minimalism or Abstract Expressionism could necessitate even an aside to that effect.

But in Michiko Kasahara's essay for her ``Life Actually'' catalog, her admission that she's single is not only appropriate, it's significant: an indicator of the deeply personal nature of this fascinating exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT).

Although ``Life Actually'' is part of the MOT Annual series-a low-budget yearly survey of emerging artists-it is far more ambitious than the usual modest showings of aspiring talents. ``Life Actually'' consists of work by 10 contemporary female artists (most with established careers) and is an entertaining, well-balanced look at the roles, perceptions and experiences of women in Japanese society today.

Curator Michiko Kasahara, who before joining the museum worked at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography from 1989 through 2002, has always been interested in female artists. She's made many exhibitions presenting the work of women photographers in particular.

``Life Actually'' begins with an examination of the conflict between identity and conformity, perhaps the most immediate issue for any young girl-given the importance of fitting in with peer groups in Japan.

Tomoko Sawada, in her late 20s and the youngest artist in the group, has created a powerful installation called ``ID 400'' using 400 sets of passport photographs. In each of the photos the artist assumes a different identity, dressing herself in a different hairstyle, makeup and expression. At once identical, yet with superficial assertions of difference, the photographs celebrate girls' love of changing their appearance, but also entail an ironic reminder of the pervasiveness of conformity.

Shifting to a slightly older age group, Hiroko Okada's video ``Singin' in the Pain'' is a comical take on the potentially tragic consequences of being a full-time homemaker.

Okada dons an apron as she dances blissfully around, cooking and shopping, before suddenly realizing the loneliness and banality of her existence and ritually disemboweling herself with an umbrella in the kitchen. It is a humorous, if slightly quaint, attack on what is still the most influential institution in Japanese women's lives: marriage. Of course, to Western eyes it is also a reminder that the feminist movement of the 1970s is really only just beginning in this country.

Yet, as Kasahara reminds us in her catalog essay, marriage in Japan has other complexities unfamiliar in the West. Here appearance counts as much as or more than reality, so the very fact of marriage provides a convenient semblance of bliss. By admitting loneliness to those around her, a housewife would undermine her own public persona.

Similarly, for unmarried women it is the perception that they must be lonely that can cause distress. Two artists who celebrate the strength inherent in solitude are painters Leiko Ikemura and Nobuko Watabiki.

Ikemura's solitary female figures, lying, flying and standing, are painted without facial features and backgrounds-tactics that lend them an aloof dignity. Meanwhile, Watabiki's more abstract characters, often with big blank eyes directed at the viewer, arrest us in their glance-as though to deflect our attention away from them and back onto ourselves.

In the very center of ``Life Actually'' lies its most confrontational work, an homage by artist unit Akio Mizoguchi O.I.C. to perhaps the most fundamental-and hitherto most obscured-aspect of femininity: the act of sex itself. With thousands of pulsating red LED lights, draping fabrics and a soundtrack of deep breathing, the work purports to depict the female experience of copulation. For male viewers, its sheer size, brightness and subtlety of movement are enough to make even the most confident of Casanovas retreat in awe.

The exhibition is rounded out by an entertaining installation of Hiroko Ichihara's trademark slogans, which brazenly put into text hitherto unspoken thoughts, and Yuki Onodera's elegant photographs, in which she seems to crystallize entire personalities in finely wrought silhouettes.

While it's comforting to know that not all curators are fixated with Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and other theoretical constructs, ``Life Actually'' does leave us with one distasteful aftertaste: the realization that it took a curator with a particularly vested interest-and the courage to expose that interest to scrutiny -to tackle these important issues, despite the fact that they have a direct impact on half the populace, an indirect impact on the other half and warrant the concern of all of us.

``MOT Annual 2005: Life Actually'' runs through March 21 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. See listing on Page 32.(IHT/Asahi: January 28,2005)

http://www.asiasource.org/news/at_mp_01_archive.cfm?passdate=01%2DFeb%2D2005

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(China.org.cn by Chen Lin, February 1, 2005)
Fragments of History: Zhougong Temple

According to the latest reports from the Zhougong Temple archeological team, they are busy piecing together the more than 700 fragments of oracle bones and inscribed tortoiseshell that have been recovered from the site.

The temple is located at the foot of Mount Fenghuang, in Qishan County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. It was built in AD 618 to commemorate Zhougong, a lord of the Western Zhou Dynasty (c.1100-771 BC). The tombs found there are the richest of the dynasty so far discovered, and there has been speculation that they may be royal.

The Western Zhou is the only dynasty whose royal tombs have not been located, and since work on the Zhougong tombs began in October, they have attracted a lot of attention.

Zhougong's actual name was Ji Dan, and he was the fourth son of King Wenwang and a brother of King Wuwang. He helped Wuwang overthrow the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) and acted as regent for seven years before returning power to King Chengwang.

Xu Tianjin, a professor from Peking University's Department of Archaeology, said that excavation of tomb No.18 had been halted due to cold weather, but will begin again in March. It is hoped that it will reveal more about the true nature of the site's history.

Now their main work involves reassembling bone and tortoiseshell fragments, hundreds of which have been unearthed but, unlike those from the Yinxu Ruins, almost none of which are complete. Once they are pieced together, the inscriptions may divulge more detailed information.

Altogether more than 760 fragments from over twenty porcelain items had been concealed in tomb No.32, a huge amount that is hoped to give a rare insight into the era. Since porcelain ware is unusual in Western Zhou tombs, they are seen by experts as significant as bronze ware would be from other sites.

There is still disagreement about whether the porcelain artifacts were actually made in northern China or transported from the south. Xu believes they could prove that people in the north were capable of producing porcelain ware, because the yellow and green glazed items found have seldom been seen in contemporaneous southern sites.
[with 6 images]

http://china.org.cn/english/2005/Feb/119467.htm

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(Chinanews.cn January 13, 2005)
Huge Archaeological Discovery at Zhougong Temple

The excavation work of the highest-grade No. 32 Western Zhou Dynasty giant tomb at the Zhougong Temple in Shaanxi Province has basically been completed. Yesterday, the leader of the archaeology team said that the excavation of the No. 32 tomb raised many new important questions and provided many new clues to the archeological research effort on Western Zhou Dynasty.

Jointly organized by the Shaanxi Archaeology Institute and the School of Archaeology and Museology of Peking University, the excavation team began a large-scale archaeological survey and a drilling exploration on the Zhougong Temple site last March. They discovered a highest-grade cluster of ten grand tombs with four passageways, four tombs with three passageways, four tombs with two passageways and four tombs with a single passageway. Archaeologists also found over 700 pieces of tortoise shells with signs, over 1,500 meters long of soil-rammed walls and many foundations for large-scale soil-rammed constructions. Some archaeologists called the No. 32 tomb "the most significant archaeological finding of New China".

The team started excavating the No. 18 and No. 32 tombs on October 17, 2004. After more than two months of intense work, the No. 32 tomb project was basically completed on the evening of January 8.

Judging from its pattern and scale, the No. 32 giant tomb was of a monarch or a monarch equivalent. The cultural relics that were unearthed provide important information on the history of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

http://china.org.cn/english/culture/117733.htm

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(China Daily January 13, 2005)
Liangzhu Tombs Give up Ancient Secrets

Xu Xinmin never thought of making headlines when he and his team first stepped into a vast paddy field in the southeast suburbs of Pinghu, a city in east China's Zhejiang Province.

The site, dating back 4,000 to 5,300 years, turned out to be the largest tomb area ever found belonging to the Liangzhu Culture of the New Stone Age.

The discovery will provide further hard evidence for historians to rewrite the lives of the primitive community who created Liangzhu Culture in the lower Yangtze River valley, covering today's Zhejiang and Shanghai.

At the site, archaeologists discovered 236 tombs in an area of 2,000 square meters, unearthing 2,600 funeral objects ranging from pottery ware, stone implements, jade ornaments and bone objects.

"To find such a large number of tombs of the Liangzhu Culture period is amazing," said Xu, leader of the archaeology team, also vice-director with the Archaeological Research Institute in Zhejiang Province.

The Zhuangqiaofen Site is located 13 kilometers southeast of Pinghu. It was first discovered in Qunfeng Village of the Lindai Town in late May, 2003 by a local farmer, who accidentally came across objects.

When he reported the find to the local culture station, Li and his team rushed to the site as they began salvage excavation on June 1, 2003.

"The tomb area was once a huge mound of earth, 1 meter high. It was turned into a paddy farmland for taking soil," Xu told China Daily.

Grave robbers had destroyed more than 10 pits when the archaeology team first got to the site. In the following 15-month excavation, archaeologists have been reporting fantastic finds on the tombs.

One of the interesting and significant finds is 162 tombs or nearly two-thirds of the total, piled one upon another and destroyed. "Such concentrated tombs in the style of packed tightly together was the first to be found in Zhejiang Province," according to Xu.

He explained the "packing tombs" (Dieya Dapo) means a new tomb is built upon an old one. During the construction of the new, the old is partly destroyed owning to limited space.

The largest packing tomb group in the Zhuangqiaofen Site is composed of 10 tombs.

Though the exact reason for the "packing tombs" is still unknown, it seems that ancient people buried in this area might have come from one big family tribe or worshiped the same ancestor, said Xu.

He speculates that the high concentration of tombs may also relate to the site's natural environment. The area is squeezed in between the sea and marshland. The dry land for the community was very limited.

At the large tomb site, researchers also discovered dogs and pigs used in the funeral ceremony. About 12 well-preserved dog skeletons lying in the same pit with their masters unearthed in the site.

Xu said the discovery of the dog or pig pits of the Liangzhu Culture period was also a first for China.

Experts believe these pits might be the place where people worshiped ancestors and gods.

Earliest plough

Among relics excavated from the site, a stone plough with a wooden bottom was first discovered in Zhejiang Province. It is also the earliest of its kind ever found in China.

"With a length of 1.06 meters, the huge plough shows that the farmland in ancient times was very large," Xu said.

As a plough must be pulled by animal such as the cow and controlled by a person, the total space between the animal and the person can reach 3-4 meters.

"It is a new discovery in the pre-historical period, which provides valuable material evidence for the study of the agricultural development in China," Xu said.

It also shows that the agriculture depending on ploughs had reached a high level in the area at that time, Xu added.

With regard to currently unearthed relics, Xu said the Zhuangqiaofen Site should be composed of a relatively large residential area, agricultural area and a tomb area.

At present, the first phrase of excavation is completed. The site is now under local government's protection for future excavation.

"With the excavation, the mystery of Liangzhu Culture will be gradually unveiled," Xu said.

http://china.org.cn/english/culture/117729.htm

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