Exhibition on China's ancient Liangzhu ruins opens in Singapore

A special exhibition of the China Media Group's (CMG) "Journey Through Civilizations: An Encounter with Liangzhu" 2024 World Tour opened in Singapore on Saturday, offering visitors an immersive, digital experience of ancient Chinese culture from around 5,000 years ago.

The exhibition, which has previously been held in Ethiopia, Egypt, Japan and at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City, marks its latest stop on its global tour.

At Saturday's opening ceremony, many visitors expressed their admiration for the ancient and unique Liangzhu culture and artifacts.

"As a city planner, I hope to make my planning, as well as the city's construction, of eternity, able to last for thousands of years. Now I see that the Liangzhu culture has a history of 5,000 years, which gives me confidence, and boosts my ambition to make the city plan and construction more lasting, and of eternity," Liu Thai Ker, a respected city planner in Singapore.

Seng Han Thong, a former parliament member, praised the exhibition for enriching Singapore's cultural landscape.

"I know that the exhibition has previously been launched in the United States and the United Kingdom, and now it is launched in Singapore. First of all, it is the luck of Singapore. Singaporeans are able to take a glimpse at various eastern and western civilizations, and other cultural performances. With one more exhibition, we can explore more of the world. And Singapore, as a globalized metropolis, is added with more color," said Seng.

In addition to display of relic replicas and introductory videos, the exhibition also allows visitors to experience jade artifact crafting, and create their own Liangzhu-themed souvenirs.

"I am so thrilled as a native Singaporean, because in Singapore we hardly have the chance to take a closer look at the thousand-years Chinese culture. So I am very excited. I also hope to have more cultural exchanges like this to come to Singapore," said a local resident.

The exhibition also features a special show of paintings themed on Liangzhu culture collected from local residents of all ages, and many children have been passionately participating.

"I would like to go to China, so I can continue to paint for Liangzhu," said a child from Singapore.

Located in the Yangtze River Basin of east China's Zhejiang Province, the archeological ruins of Liangzhu (3300 BC-2300 BC) reveal an early regional state with a unified belief system based on rice cultivation in Late Neolithic China. It has been listed as one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites since 2019.

China's civil aviation industry handled 800,000 tonnes of air freight in September, up 13.9 percent year on year, hitting their highest in months, according to the country's civil aviation authorities. China's air cargo transport showed a sound growth momentum with increasing freight volume on both the domestic and the international routes. Air freight volume on the domestic routes saw a 7.5 percent year-on-year increase to 484,000 tonnes and air cargo traffic on the international routes went up 25.3 percent year on year to 315,000 tonnes, statistics from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) showed.

Air freight volume reached 6.48 million tonnes in the January-September period, up 24.4 percent year on year, with the domestic routes handling 3.89 million tonnes of air cargo, up 19.4 percent year on year, and the international routes handling 2.6 million tonnes of air cargo, up 32.8 percent year on year.