New musical unearths story of Sanxingdui excavation

When award-winning theater director Thom Southerland was invited to join the production of an original Chinese musical, which aims to bring the archaeological discoveries from the Sanxingdui site to life onstage, he did some research about the site, which he found intriguing.

Sanxingdui site was discovered in Guanghan, Sichuan province, in 1929. Dating back at least 3,000 years, the site is best known for the numerous exotic-looking bronze and gold artifacts found in "sacrificial pits". Since 2020, a new round of site excavations has attracted widespread domestic and global attention.

"I was amazed by those mysterious items from thousands of years ago. The mask is always in my mind. When I learned that the mask was created thousands of years ago, it seemed to be very unreal. I feel inspired," says Southerland, who appeared in Beijing on May 8, when Sanxingdui the Musical was launched, referring to the gold mask discovered at the site. Southerland is excited, as he plans to visit the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, which was built in the 1990s to keep, preserve, display, and research the archaeological discoveries from the site.