Shipwrecks and Exported Porcelain Exhibition on the Maritime Silk Road opened on May 8th in China Maritime Museum. The museum locates in Lingang New City, a satellite town in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area. This ongoing exhibition will last until Aug 7th, which offers an exploration to the stories of ill-fated voyages through the export of porcelain from 11 shipwrecks.
The exhibition was showed first at the Nanjing Museum from Sept 28th to Dec 28th last year. Then it was showed at the Ningbo Museum from Jan 19th to April 8th. The director of the Nanjing Museum Administration, Cao Zhijun said that Shanghai is the final stop of the exhibition, and it has attracted about 220,000 visitors in Nanjing and 170,000 in Ningbo. The exhibition was also included on the top 10 shortlist for quality exhibitions in China this year.
More than 240 objects from 22 museums and institutions across China were showed on the exhibition. Most of them were the unearthed ones from the shipwrecks. In addition, the exhibition also displayed models of the ships and video recordings of the excavations, which provided visitors with a chance to learn about ancient ship-building techniques and porcelain’s production process.
A shipwreck is like a museum that is filled with stories of the people aboard. The exhibition will improve people's understanding of the ancient Maritime Silk Road. “Through this exhibition, we hope to promote communications among different countries and play an important part in the building of the Belt and Road Initiative", said Wang Yu, deputy director of the China Maritime Museum.