Huashan Rock Paintings, Ningming
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The painted panel covers roughly 8,000 square metres, making it one of the largest single rock-art panels known anywhere in the world.
- Of nearly 1,950 images on the Huashan cliff, about 1,556 are human figures, arranged in some 110 separate groups.
- Most human figures are between 60 and 150 centimetres tall, but the largest rises more than 3 metres, the biggest figure in the whole World Heritage property.
- Uranium-thorium dating of 56 mineral crusts over and under the paint placed the figures at about AD 94 to 222, suggesting painting lasted over a century.
- Inscribed on 15 July 2016, the Zuojiang Huashan rock art landscape became China's 49th UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Why it is worth it
A limestone cliff leans out over a bend of the Ming River in southern Guangxi, and across its face, tens of metres above the water, march some 1,900 red figures. Most are human silhouettes with arms raised and bent at the elbow and knees splayed in a squat, a posture often compared to a frog. Among them stand larger frontal figures, some wearing headdresses or swords, some with a dog or horse beside them, and around them float bronze drums, bells, knives and boats. The main panel at Huashan is about 170 metres wide and 40 metres high, one of the largest ancient rock paintings in China.
The pictures were painted between roughly the Warring States period and the Eastern Han, some 1,800 to 2,500 years ago, by the Luo Yue, the people of the Zuo River valley who are regarded as ancestors of the Zhuang and of peoples now living in northern Vietnam. Archaeologists dated them partly by the objects they show: the drums, bells and ring-pommelled knives belong to types used in that period, and radiocarbon dates from calcite deposits that formed over the paint point to the same era. The pigment is ground haematite mixed with animal glue or blood, laid on as flat silhouettes without faces. Most images sit between 15 and 100 metres above the river on an overhanging wall, and scholars still debate how the painters reached them, with bamboo or timber scaffolding the most favoured explanation. The scenes are thought to show the rituals and community life of the Luo Yue.
The name comes from the Zhuang words pay laiz, "the mountain with patterns" or "painted mountain". Chinese writers mentioned the red "ghost shadows" on river cliffs as early as the Song dynasty, and boatmen are said to have honoured them as images of their ancestors. In 2016 Huashan and 37 other painted sites spread along some 105 kilometres of the Zuo and Ming rivers were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage List as the Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape.
Getting there
The Huashan cliff lies in Ningming County, Chongzuo prefecture, Guangxi, about 25 km north-west of the Ningming county town. Nanning Wuxu International Airport (NNG) is about 124 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape is an extensive assembly of historical rock art that was painted on limestone cliff faces in Guangxi, southern China. The paintings are located on the west bank of the Ming River (Guangxi) which is a tributary of the Zuo River. The area of the paintings is part of the Nonggang Nature Reserve and belongs to Ningming County. On July 15, 2016, Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape was listed as the 49th UNESCO World Heritage Site in China.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
22.24833, 107.04228per Wikidata