Archeological town to link Shanghai's history with present

• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Publication title: Shanghai Daily

IT was a sunny morning when I sauntered through suburban Shanghai earlier this week in search of an archeological site around which a cultural town will soon take shape.

I was looking for the Songze Site as it had just been named one of China's 100 most important excavation discoveries over the past century.

The discoveries that began in the 1950s eventually proved that Shanghai had a history of at least 6,000 years, in contrast to erstwhile popular belief that it was a quite young city with a history of only a few hundred years.

Shanghai Songze Site Museum, built above a small portion of the 150,000-square-meter backfilled excavation ground, sits on the northern border of Songze Village, surrounded by rivers and a highway.

If you drive westward from downtown Shanghai, you may easily miss the museum, because you need to make a cautious U-turn somewhere from Huqingping Highway and then watch carefully for a signboard.

Once you make it to the museum, you'll find yourself in a different world from the hustling highway.

t least that's how I felt -- an enormous silence enveloped me as soon as I stepped out of my car and stood on the tree-shaded square of Songze Site. I walked a few minutes from the parking lot to the museum, which opened to public in 2014.

For about two hours I immersed myself in the exhibition of excavation achievements.

couple in their 60s, who spoke Shanghai dialect, were as curious as I about how Shanghai's first settlers came and cultivated a landed life in this region about 6,000 years ago.

It was the Neolithic Age. Rice was beginning to be grown and pigs were domesticated. Wells were also found to be in use at that time, attesting to our ancestors' early achievements in improving water supply for life and agriculture.

In the exhibition hall, a combination of real and duplicated relics -- from a human skull to a thatched house -- makes it clear to a visitor that this region boasts Shanghai's first settlers, first rice, first house and first village. It was a village of ordinary farmers.

"What an achievement 6,000 years ago!" the old man murmured to his wife, suppressing his surprise at his new finding. So did I, only that I was murmuring to myself in silence.

Before the discovery, it was believed than man had learned to domesticate pigs only about 5,000 years ago. This discovery further proved that China is the first country in the world to grow rice.

How I wish more people would know this part of Shanghai history.

The museum's location probably...