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Museum to shocase marine history
By Zheng Caixiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-03-11 01:23 A 180-million-yuan (US$21.7
million) museum will soon be built to showcase the history of the so-called
Marine Silk Road -- ancient China's southern outlet to outside world -- in
Yangjiang, a coastal city in the western part of South China's Guangdong
Province.
Located on Hailing Island, the China Marine Silk Road Museum -- expected to
be completed in 18 months -- will cover an area of 8,000 hectares; and mainly
exhibit ancient vessels to be salvaged from the South China Sea and the cultural
relics from the ships.
More than 1,000 old vessels are believed to have been submerged in the waters
around Guangdong; and Nanhai No 1, from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), set to be
salvaged from Yangjiang waters later this year, is just one of many that sank
centuries ago.
A special task force consisting of archaeologists and relic experts from the
province and Beijing was set up late last year to take charge of the project.
Cao Chunliang, director-general of the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of
Culture, said Wednesday that the salvaging of Nanhai No 1 would be a significant
archaeological feat; experts have said that its impact would be similar to the
discovery of the terracotta warriors in Xi'an of Northwest China's Shaanxi
Province, he added.
The wooden vessel, which is still in good condition after sinking more than
1,000 years ago en route to the Middle East, is 30 metres long and 10 metres
wide; and is estimated to contain between 60,000 and 80,000 valuable cultural
relics.
Nanhai No 1 was discovered and named in the 1980s and archaeologists have
removed 4,000 historical relics from only one small hold of the ship since March
2002 -- most of them ceramics and porcelain produced in East China's Fujian,
Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces during the Song Dynasty
(960-1279).
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