Author丨Zhao Wenyu, a high school student from Guangdong Experimental Middle School
In the dead of winter, I visited the exhibition area of the tomb of the king of Nanyue twice in a week, one by myself and the other by the class. During the visit, on the basis of understanding the history of the Nanyue Kingdom and even the entire southern region, everyone saw the "King Wen Xingxi" seal with a gold content of up to 98%, the exquisitely carved rhinoceros horn jade cup and the silk jade clothes and other treasures of the town hall, and also got a rare opportunity to visit the real tomb.
But what touched me the most was not the above-mentioned cultural relics and treasures, but the efforts of archaeologists and cultural relics workers.
2023 marks the 40th anniversary of the discovery and excavation of the tomb of King Wen of South Vietnam, and the museum has set up a special exhibition to show the real work of archaeologists in those years and the protection of cultural relics in the museum today. Forty years ago, when the equipment was not as advanced as it is now, archaeologists could be described as "opening roads in the mountains and building bridges in the water" When discovered, the first door of the tomb of the king has been damaged due to the gravity of the mountain, so the first tomb door was opened, allowing one person to pass through, but the second tomb door is still locked, the archaeologists had to dig out the passage from the ground of the tomb, and send people to enter from the underground to open it; a side chamber of the tomb was originally neatly placed on the wooden frame of various utensils, but after flooding and years of erosion, the wooden frame has decayed and collapsed, all kinds of cultural relics spread all over the ground of the side room, in order to protect the integrity of the site, cultural relics workers can only innovatively build a low-altitude work platform for excavation...... There are many more stories like this.
From the details, we can also get a glimpse of some of the current cultural preservation work of the hospital. When visiting the museum, if you pay close attention, it is not difficult to find the monitoring instruments in the corners of each display case. When I went down to the original site of the tomb during my first visit, in addition to the carbon dioxide detectors that appeared in the official promotional videos, I also noticed the white tape on the walls of the tomb and the marker stickers next to it, and the same marker stickers appeared on the stone faces on both sides of the tomb. I took photos and asked the docents during the study, and learned that these marks were not left during the excavation, but the marks made by the museum in the daily maintenance work of the museum on the places that need to be restored or protected. On the same day, it rained lightly in Guangzhou, and in order to prevent the glass roof from leaking and damaging the site, the museum staff also took special protection and precautionary measures.
When it comes to archaeology and cultural relics protection, which are both familiar and unfamiliar, I don't know what everyone will think. Maybe it's an "unpopular major", or "I repair cultural relics in the Forbidden City" and "I repair cultural relics in Dunhuang" that have long been out of the circle. But that's not the whole story. In museums and open-air ruins across the country, most tourists look at the cultural relics and then take pictures and skip them, those seemingly inconspicuous small exhibits that are not "treasures of the town", but behind them carry the efforts of cultural relics workers for months, years, or even more than ten years and decades. The wheels of history are rolling forward, we are all moving forward, only they are moving back, although slowly, but very firmly.
Who says it's the heroes who stand in the light? We should see them behind the artefacts, the heroes behind the scenes.
Collation and release丨Guangdong Provincial Cultural Society He Media Studio
Photo by He Jinde
Graphic review丨Chen Jiayu (High School Teacher, Guangdong Experimental Middle School)