The General Exhibition Hall of Sanxingdui Museum 

On February 29, the General Exhibition Hall of Sanxingdui Museum opened to the public with its cloud exhibition hall allowing visitors. In order to respond to the delay in its opening due to the outbreak of the COVID-19, Sanxingdui Museum started its digital collection for the General Branch of Sanxingdui Museum. It opened an immersive VR cloud exhibition hall that had talks by the “designer”, “curator” and live broadcasts by the commentators.

The upgraded General Exhibition Hall of Sanxingdui Museum covers an area of 4000 square meters, displaying 394 pieces (sets) of cultural relics, including pottery, jade, gold, bronze, etc. This comprehensively and systematically introduces the history of ancient Shu and its brilliant achievements in various fields and highlights how well the ancient Shu civilization represented by Sanxingdui became an integral part of the Chinese civilization.

National treasure Yuzhang on show at home.

A Yuzhang from the Shang Dynasty, unearthed in the No. 2 sacrificial pit of Sanxingdui in 1986 will be showcased for the first time in the Sanxingdui Museum. There are two groups of patterns on the Yuzhang. Each group has people, mountains and Yazhang — another kind of a jade tablet. It depicts the scene of ancient Shu ancestors holding Yazhang on the altar as a sacrifice to the mountains and rivers in heaven and earth. The information in the patterns is very rich. It shows the religious beliefs and rituals of ancient Shu people. It has great academic value in terms of the study of religion, rituals and etiquette of ancient Shu people.

With new technology, cultural relics go "live".

The General Exhibition Hall of Sanxingdui Museum has got a digital makeover. It now uses multimedia technology to portray the cultural nuances of Sanxingdui in a more comprehensive way. Multimedia in the preface hall named ‘Eye of Sanxingdui’ outlines key nodes of Sanxingdui discovery and excavation, recreates historical scenes and events, and reveals the core of Sanxingdui culture of "ancient city, ancient country and ancient Shu ruins".

A new way of cultural exhibition

"This is the first online regular exhibition held by Sanxingdui Museum. Netizens can act as if they were there — they can jointly unveil the cloud exhibition hall of the comprehensive museum by attaching gold on the Sanxingdui portrait of a golden face. At the same time, they can visit the VR exhibition of the General Exhibition Hall for free, listen to the explanation of the General Exhibition Hall of Sanxingdui Museum, and participate in the interactive activities such as group photo of Sanxingdui national treasure. Through the invitation of the official account of the WeChat of Sanxingdui Museum, netizens can participate together, which increases the interaction and experience of the cloud exhibition hall, hoping to attracting more viewers’ attention for "cloud walking around Sanxingdui and dreaming about the ancient Shu Kingdom". Zhu Jiake, executive deputy curator of Sanxingdui Museum, spoke of the significance of hosting the cloud exhibition hall and its opening ceremony.

The bronze sculptures of Sanxingdui

Sanxingdui ancient ruins are known as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century and are reputed as the "origin of Yangtze civilization" which shows that the Yangtze River Basin, like the Yellow River Basin, is an import part of Chinese civilization. The Sanxingdui Museum, located in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, displays pottery, jade, gold, bronze and other cultural relics unearthed from Sanxingdui ancient ruins.（By Fu Yuanwei）