Modern city home to ancient culture

The exhibition, meanwhile, invites the audience to join in a discussion about one of the unsolved questions surrounding Shangshan Culture: How people back then prepared the rice.

Some researchers say a stone-cooking method was used: People threw heated stones into widemouthed pottery basins-some of these are on show-and the heat would cook the rice.

Others say that Shangshan people first ground the grains into powder before steaming and boiling them.

The Shangshan sites, together with other Neolithic culture sites in Zhejiang-Hemudu and Liangzhu-were inscribed on the list of the top 100 archaeological discoveries in China of the past century. The top 100 list was announced by the National Cultural Heritage Administration in October to mark the birth of modern Chinese archaeology.

Yu Peifen, Party secretary of Pujiang county, says that there are plans to build the site into a Shangshan Culture museum by 2025, and also explore its inscription onto the UNESCO World Heritage list.