Liangzhu Archaeological Site

My visit to Liangzhu started at the museum, located in a building designed by David Chipperfield architects - it seems that companies like these thrive on the construction booms of China and the Gulf states. This building too must have cost a small fortune. It lies within a pretty landscaped garden setting with a manmade lake, probably referencing the Liangzhu civilization's wetland origins.

The exhibition experience wasn't so pleasant due to the large school groups roaming around. Overall the building comprises more empty space than original exhibits, but it holds the jade grave objects that were taken from the site and some interesting pottery displaying primitive written characters (the Liangzhu culture had no script but they were getting there!). The best thing I found was the 3d video performance, which much more clearly than the nomination file explains the nature of Liangzhu: how its people ‘tamed’ the wetlands by buildings dams and turned it into a liveable city with stilt houses and people navigating around by wooden boats. It reminded me a bit of Xochimilco, but that may have been blurred by the Native American feel of how the ritual acts (by people with feathered headdresses) are displayed.

The archeological site also starts with a wetland theme - you can clearly see the natural state of this area when you enter the area on foot. As others have noted it’s quite a hike to the main historical area (the palace area) and it’s all unshaded. I walked for …

As a Westerner, China tends to be a footnote in the school curriculum, even more so Chinese prehistory. Prehistory in my school meant Egypt and Mesopotamia, ... but very little is said and written about China. I probably learnt more on Chinese history in Kung Fu movies than in school.

So, it was a welcome stop to visit a prehistoric site in China, Liangzhu. To this day, the greater Yangtze River Delta to which Liangzhu belongs is a huge economic and population center. And it was so already 5000 years ago as evidenced by the immense size of the archeological site. The Chinese have done a good job of presenting the site with plenty sign posts (some in English) and small expositions scattered around the site. Most memorable parts to me were the palace hill, the pillars, and the cemetery.

Getting There

Liangzhu (the modern town) is a suburb of Hangzhou and you can get there by metro. However, from the subway station it's another 8km to the actual site, so you need to catch a bus. The bus station is well signposted in the metro station (Southern exit, I think Exit D). When I arrived, there was only one bus waiting and it was the right one. topchinatravel.com lists provides a comprehensive list of all bus lines that go to the site.

The bus will first pass the Liangzhu Museum (not part of the site). You have to stay on the bus till you see …

Liangzhu is located on the outskirts of Hangzhou, not far from the furthest reaches of the metro system. Initially when we planned our visit we were only aware of the museum, and had simply planned to visit that. But not long before our visit we were made aware of tours of the actual archaeological site, with the option to book online. We weren't sure about paying 80 yuan to see what we thought would be a standard archaeological site with virtually nothing to see, and anyway it probably wanted us to pay using Alipay or something similar that we didn't have, so we skipped booking.

It was a lovely sunny day when we arrived at the Liangzhu Museum. The museum exhibit is excellent and every modern, although only parts of the display have English translation (enough to learn about the Liangzhu culture but not enough to draw out your visit to become overly long). The highlight are the fine jade artefacts. There were also the first of multiple references to "5000 years of Chinese history" - aha, the reason for this site being prioritised by the Chinese! 

We still had plenty of the day left, so we figured, let's go visit the closest archaeological site and see what the deal is with visiting, without a booking. On Google Maps, search for "Liangzhu Ancient City Relic Site". But the actual entrance is on the major road G104 to the south. We caught another bus from near the museum, which …

At the time of writing the Liangzhu sites are gearing up for an inscription attempt. I went to the Liangzhu Museum on the outskirts of Hangzhou a couple of years ago. It can easily reached by bus from the city center areas and the bus is semi-frequent plus very cheap. Now I have to say I did not actually go to any of the archaeological sites with the assumption that they are off-limits, but I don't know for certain. It certainly looks like nothing on the map so I did not want to "waste" my time trekking around in the heat. Either way, unless you are purist you are better off going to the museum for all the insight into the Liangzhu culture and the findings at those dig sites.

Update: I ended up going back to this area a week later and went to an archeological site called Mojiaoshan where you can see some dig sites, rather unimpressed, but it allows you to say you went there. I was correct to assume they left nothing valuable here but some dirty canal covered with a plastic roof.

The museum is big. Really big. You can spend 2-3 hours here depending on the temporary exhibition on offer. In a typical museum fashion everything you see is behind glass panels with descriptions. The best ones I found were the jade artifacts, usually rings or some kind of vases (they called them "cong").

With Hangzhou being a bit of a …