A special exhibition on the ancient Liangzhu ruins in China opened in Luxor, Egypt on Thursday, offering audiences an immersive, digital experience of ancient Chinese civilization.
The "Journey Through Civilizations: An Encounter with Liangzhu 2024 World Tour" exhibition was previously held in Cairo, Tokyo, and at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City. Co-hosted by China Media Group (CMG), the Luxor Museum, and the China Cultural Center in Cairo, the Luxor showcase marks the latest stop on the exhibition's global tour.
The archeological ruins of Liangzhu (about 3,300-2,300 BCE), located in the Yangtze River Basin in east China's Zhejiang Province, reveal an early regional state with a unified belief system based on rice cultivation in Late Neolithic China. It has been listed as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage sites since 2019.
The month-long exhibition in Luxor showcases key finds at the Liangzhu ruins site, including its extensive water conservation system, agricultural production tools, primitive writing symbols, and exquisite jade artifacts. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the long history of the Liangzhu civilization, which has been recognized as tangible evidence of 5,000 years of Chinese cultural history.
Modern technologies are also on display at the exhibition to demonstrate the developmental trajectories of ancient Chinese and Egyptian civilizations, two of the oldest in the world.
The launch was witnessed by Shen Haixiong, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and president of CMG and Abdel-Mottaleb Emara, the Governor of Luxor. They also held in-depth discussions on mutually beneficial cooperation in areas such as culture, tourism, and media.
Shen praised Luxor for its reputation as the world's largest open-air museum, noting its abundance of cultural relics and heritage sites that symbolize ancient Egyptian civilization.
Shen said that 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Egypt comprehensive strategic partnership, which is also designated as the China-Egypt year of partnership. CMG is willing to deepen cooperation with Luxor in areas such as joint program production, tourism resource promotion, cultural heritage protection and exhibitions, as well as personnel exchanges, and mutual learning to further enhance the friendship between the people of the two countries.
Governor Emara welcomed the CMG delegation and thanked CMG for its efforts in promoting mutual learning and people-to-people friendship between Egypt and China.
Luxor is one of the most important tourist cities in Egypt and has maintained long-term friendly cooperation with many cities in China. Emara said that Luxor hopes to work with CMG in the future, leveraging the group's strong communication capabilities and influence to showcase Luxor's natural scenery, historical heritage, and civilizational stories to more Chinese audiences, thereby furthering the mutual understanding between the people of the two countries.
Luxor is located 700 kilometers south of Cairo on the Nile River, historically known as Thebes. It was the capital of the Middle and New Kingdoms of ancient Egypt, with a history of over 4,000 years. As the political and religious center of the Pharaonic era, Luxor is home to numerous temples and monuments, including the Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple, Valley of the Kings, and Valley of the Queens. Its economy is mainly dependent on the tourism industry, with Chinese visitors making up the largest number of tourists to Luxor from any nation.
Exhibition on China’s ancient Liangzhu ruins opens in Luxor, Egypt
