Staff members arrange a cultural relic on Monday for the upcoming Gazing at Sanxingdui: New Archaeological Discoveries in Sichuan exhibition at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. The exhibition, featuring a total of 120 objects made of bronze, jade, gold and ceramic, dating back some 2,600 to 4,500 years, will start on Sept 27 and run through Jan 8. (PHOTO / XINHUA)
The long-awaited special exhibition of mysterious Sanxingdui relics, to be staged in Hong Kong this month, will provide a shortcut for cultural enthusiasts to learn about Chinese culture in its embryonic age, said archaeologists involved in the exhibition’s curation.
The exhibition — Gazing at San-xingdui: New Archaeological Discoveries in Sichuan — will be held at the Hong Kong Palace Museum from Sept 27 to Jan 8, showcasing rich content and immersive multimedia elements.
The upcoming cultural feast will present 120 pieces of bronze, jade, gold and pottery dating from 2,600 to 4,500 years ago; many of them will be exhibited for the first time outside Sichuan province, where the relics were unearthed.
As the exhibition’s opening date approaches, curators and relic conservators from Sichuan and the HKPM have been working closely to check the condition of these priceless artifacts that arrived in Hong Kong on Monday, as well as making final preparation at the HKPM’s Gallery 8, where the treasures will meet curious stares from visitors.
Most of the artifacts were created by people of the Sanxingdui culture — an ancient Shu civilization that originated in Southwest China’s Sichuan Basin. A few came from Sanxingdui’s predecessor Baodun culture, and the rest belong to the Jinsha culture, which is believed to be Sanxingdui’s successor.
At a media briefing last week, HKPM Director Louis Ng Chi-wa called the exhibition a rare chance for Hong Kong people to explore the ancient Sanxingdui civilization, as some of the exhibits have never been seen by the general public.
Ng said he hopes the exhibition will enable both locals and visitors of Hong Kong to learn more about the diversity of Chinese civilization.
He said the exhibition’s curators — Jiao Tianlong and Wang Sheng-yu have made use of their overseas experience to make the exhibition accessible to people of different cultural backgrounds.
Jiao said a keyword of the display is “gazing”, which not only refers to the Sanxingdui people’s veneration of eyes — which is reflected in the countless eye-shaped objects, and masks with eyes that have been excavated — but also people’s psychological interaction with the relics when they see these treasures.
He said he hopes visitors will enjoy the innovative presentation of the exhibition, which his team has been preparing for more than two years.
Although some Sanxingdui artifacts, such as the bronze sacred trees, are not allowed to be displayed outside the Chinese mainland, Jiao said his team will help visitors experience these treasures’ charm through multimedia elements, promising the effect will be “stunning”.
Wang said the display will be divided into five parts, featuring the arcane ancient civilization’s veneration of eyes, social activities, people’s food and clothing, sacrificial systems, and the connections with other contemporaneous civilizations in China.
Wang also said that as no writing system has been discovered in the Sanxingdui culture, many of its mysteries remain “open questions”. She believes that visitor will have their own answers and thoughts on the ancient culture after seeing the display.
To provide deeper context for visitors, Tang Fei, director of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, will share his insights at a public seminar to be held on Sept 28. An international symposium will also be held on Sept 27 and 28 for Chinese and overseas scholars to present the latest archaeological discoveries and research on the Sanxingdui culture.
The Sanxingdui special exhibition in the HKPM is a highlight of the West Kowloon Cultural District’s cultural feast package to be presented in the coming months.
In October, a jazz festival will be staged in the city, with over 500 jazz musicians from 11 countries and regions, including the US, the UK, South Africa, Poland, and the Chinese mainland.
Local performer Elaine Jin Yam-ling will bring in her latest stage show, Hard Times, to the West Kowloon Cultural District from Saturday to Oct 1.
