Qingzhou's trove

Relics from the Longxing Temple in East China are exhibited in Beijing ahead of the World Congress of Art History, Lin Qi reports.

Two decades ago, construction workers discovered a cache while digging a foundation for a school in Qingzhou city in East China's Shandong province. Then, archaeologists found it belonged to a relic site of the Longxing Temple that was built around the fifth century and demolished some 800 years later.

The archaeologists were surprised to find that an art trove had survived underground for centuries. They unearthed several hundred Buddhist images that were made of various materials and traced back from the Northern Wei (AD 386-534) to the Northern Song (960-1127) dynasties.