An ancient boat of Southern Song Dynasty (1127 - 1279) has
completed its three-year renovation and became open to the public
on December 10 in Ningbo City of Zhejiang Province. It provides evidence for
the maritime Silk Road which has applied to be listed as a World Heritage site. The renovation cost almost
1 million yuan (US$128,000).
The boat is 12.79 meters long, 2.8 meters wide and weighs 2
tons. It was mainly used for short-distance transport of up to 3
tons of goods and occasionally served as a passenger transport in
the port.
This is the third ancient boat excavated in Ningbo City, bearing
witness to ancient Ningbo's splendid history in overseas trade and
ship building.
The boat was excavated to the south of the city gate's enceinte
site of Heyi Road in the north part of Zhanchuan Street in Ningbo
City in 2003. It lay broken at both ends with only the middle part
preserved. Due to its long sojourn underground, it was found to
contain quantities of mildew and lichen and to have suffered wood
shrinkage and the main body contained over 1,000 cracks.
"The two other boats excavated before this one were not
well-protected, giving us an international puzzle on wooden
cultural relics protection," said Chu Xiaobo, Ningbo Cultural
Relics Protection Institute.
To protect this boat well, the municipal finance department
appropriated more than 900,000 yuan (US$115,000) to renovate it. A
joint work team was set up by the city's cultural relics and
archaeology institute, Wuhan University of Technology and Nanjing
Museum. After a series of complex procedures including dehydrating,
desalting, reinforcing and piecing together the fragments, the boat
was restored and exhibited in the Ningbo Museum.
"This is rare substantial evidence for the maritime Silk Road.
It will help citizen feel the real history. At the same time, we
will accelerate underwater archaeology research and find more and
better evidences for that period of history," said Chu. He added
that ten relic sites of the maritime Silk Road have been proven,
among which Ningbo is the only site without underwater
evidence.
Chu revealed, as an important supplement to the archaeology on land, an underwater archaeology
team has already been created by the Underwater Archaeology
Research Center of the China National Museum and several other
underwater archaeology institutes in Zhejiang, Liaoning and
Guangdong provinces. The team will begin excavating 37 cultural
relic sites in the sea of Ningbo in May next year.
(China.org.cn by Chen Lin, December 19, 2006)
