Last week InternChina Chengdu organised a little cultural trip to the archeological site of Sanxingdui (三星堆) about 1,5 hrs outside of Chengdu. We met for lunch at a dumpling restaurant after everybody finished their morning language classes and afterwards set off to take the bus to Guanghan (广汉) a city northwest of Chengdu where the site is located.

In 1986, several Bronze Age artifacts, made out of gold, bronze, jade and pottery, were unearthed at Sanxingdui and eventually it became clear that this is the site of an ancient city of the kingdom of the Shu (蜀) dating back to the 12^th century BCE. The re-discovery of this ancient civilization was a big surprise at the time, since it caused Chinese historians to question the traditional narrative of the origin of the Chinese civilization being in the central plain of the Yangtze (长江) river. Nowadays it’s said that there have been multiple centres of ancient cultures in China which build the foundation what is commonly known as the Chinese civilization.

They built a really nice museum with multiple exhibition halls in a beautiful park setting next to the site to display the artifacts and educate people about the history of the Shu culture. We arrived there in the late afternoon and started our journey back in time marveling at the various masks, figures, tools and relics on show. Looking at these 3000 year old skillfully handcrafted artifacts made a deep impression on us.

Later on we spent some time hanging out in the park and made the obligatory group photo in front of a replica of one the most famous figures unearthed at this site. After we came back to Chengdu in the evening we decided to wind down with a beer and dinner at one of Chengdu’s favorite Western restaurants Peter’s Tex Mex.

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