Sanxingdui bronze mask Chinese New Year's Eve celebrate the New Year

Chengdu, 31 Jan (Xinhua) -- On the evening of the 31st, it was Chinese New Year's Eve night, and the bronze masks unearthed at the Sanxingdui site appeared at the 2022 Spring Festival Gala of the Central Radio and Television Corporation to celebrate the Spring Festival.

Tang Fei, president of the Sichuan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, introduced that the bronze mask that appeared on the stage of the 2022 Spring Festival Gala on the main stage was 131cm wide, 71cm high, 66cm deep, and weighed 131 kilograms, which was the largest and well-preserved large-scale bronze mask excavated from the Sanxingdui site known. Its wide forehead, angular edges, smooth eyebrows, eyes, lips and other lines, all protruding from the face, thick and long eyebrows as a raised shape, the two sides of the mask up and down and in the front of the forehead in the square perforation, may be used for fixed purposes. The bronze mask is a typical artifact of the Sanxingdui culture, dating back more than 3,000 years, reflecting the understanding and thinking of the ancient Shu ancestors on the natural things and the world of gods and gods.

Located in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, about 40 kilometers south of Chengdu City, sanxingdui ruins are one of the most important ancient sites in the pre-Qin period in southwest China. In 1986, the excavation of the No. 1 and No. 2 "Sacrifice Pits" unearthed thousands of precious cultural relics such as bronze sacred trees, bronze Da Liren, bronze masks, and golden scepters, and the Sanxingdui site "woke up to shock the world" and attracted worldwide attention.

Since December 2019, under the guidance and support of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics has organized the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other units to discover 6 new "sacrifice pits" in the area where the No. 1 and No. 2 "sacrifice pits" are located, numbered 3 to 8 "sacrifice pits" respectively.

At the beginning of 2021, archaeologists began excavations of "sacrificial pit" No. 3. On March 16, the buried cultural relics in the pit were fully presented, including bronze, jade, gold, ivory and other precious cultural relics, and the bronze mask was located in the south-central part of the No. 3 "Sacrifice Pit".

On June 23, 2021, the bronze mask was extracted from the pit. Archaeologists and cultural relics conservators analyzed and studied its casting process and believed that its production was first divided into castings, cast by the face, the back of the cheeks, the eyes, the ears and other parts, and then combined into one, and the right eye of the large mask also found silk fabric residues of warp and weft tissues.

As a major project of "Archaeology in China", the excavation of sanxingdui site is also a typical representative of China's century-old archaeological achievements, since its discovery in 1929, several generations of archaeologists have continued to struggle for a hundred years and explore the roots of civilization. By the end of 2021, Sanxingdui has only discovered 6 new "sacrifice pits" with a total of more than 10,000 numbered cultural relics, including gold masks, top statues, large masks, altar models, kneeling bronze figures, more than 500 ivory and many other exquisite cultural relics, some of which can be viewed at close range in the Sanxingdui Museum. Many cultural relics such as Tongzun, Tongzun, Yuzhang, and Yuqun show the close connection between Shudi and the culture of the Central Plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and empirically demonstrate the historical development process of the pluralism and integration of Chinese civilization.