Spooky masks with bulging eyes and bulbous noses. A creepy shamanic figure with an exaggerated face, and giant hands. A towering tree with serpentine branches.
I’m not talking about a haunted house — I’m talking about Sanxingdui, the Sichuan mystery that forever shook up Chinese history as we know it.
If the Yellow River is the so-called cradle of civilization, then how do we explain a cache of bronzes and other artifacts contemporary with the Shang, but worlds away from Shang style?
Archeologists called the 1986 find Sanxingdui, because there were three mounds, each resembling a star, and linked it with the Shu culture that historically teamed up with the Zhou state to eventually topple the Shang.
But there’s a problem — Sanxingdui yielded no written records. Unlike the Shang, which offered a window into their world through oracle bones, scientists can only guess the meaning in Sanxingdui artifacts. Continue reading “Travel China with the Yangxifu: The Spooky Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Sichuan”