Precious porcelain

A display of nearly 300 antique objects in its collection shows ceramic types and kilns mostly ordered by foreign countries. Some of the objects on show were excavated from the wrecks of sunken cargo ships that had been under the sea for a long time, such as Nanhai No 1, a Chinese merchant carrier dating back more than 800 years.

Wang Chunfa, director of the National Museum of China, says the Maritime Silk Road, being a major channel of outbound trade and cultural exchanges for ancient China, was primarily established between the third and second centuries BC.But it was not until the mid-to late Tang Dynasty that Chinese porcelain became an export commodity in large demand.

Jia Dan, a Tang Dynasty chancellor and geographer from the eighth century, mentioned two major marine routes for porcelain at that time in a book. One connected Guangzhou (in today's Guangdong province) and the southern Asian and Arabian markets, and the other connected Penglai (in today's Shandong province), Jeju Island in South Korea and Japan.

Ceramics being traded then were largely monochromatic-normally with a grayish-yellow green or creamy-white glaze-and they were fired at kilns in areas that are now the provinces of Hebei, Hunan, Zhejiang and Guangdong. The three-color drip glaze sancai pottery that became prominent during the Tang Dynasty was also sought by foreign buyers.