Asian Civilisations Museum – hidden gem to understand Chinese history

Went to the Museum as we’re wandering in Singapore in a hot day and looking for a room with air-conditioner, thought we’d stay there for 10 minutes to cool down before resume exploring the rest of Singapore. Surprisingly I found the items in the museum are amazing and end up 4 hours inside.

Here are some items I reckon valuable to understand the China’s history.

The items were recovered from a numerous ship wrechage in Java sea in 21-Century, the events of maritime trade between China and Mid-east 500 years ago. The idea of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative isn’t new, it’s just a reflection of past trade.

Tower with moat, 25-220 AD, symbolising wealth and rank, a burial ware. The basin, filled with a living assortment of animals, likely represets a moat or pond.. Figures of dancers and musicians crowd the upper level indicating that some of the towers may have represetned pleasure pavillions. such structure could have also been defensive watchtower.

Mirrors withe cosmological decoration, made in 684 AD, apparently before human using glass as a mirror. The Eight Trigrams on the mirror are associated with yin and yang. 

The fascinating part of these cup is that they have a straw. On bottom of the cup it is a fish, drink via the straw and water is taken under fish.

A traditional study setup, still works if you have you Mac computer on it.

Packing 70,000 bowls onto an 18-meter-long ship. Thousands of ceramic bowls were tightly coiled inside storage jars, about 130 bowls were packed in each jar, cushioned by straw. This packing method and the silt of the seabed protected most of the ceramics against damage. The ship’s 70,000 ceramics weighted about 25 tons.

You might like this too – India Ancient Buddha though.