Shipwrecks offer up their treasures

Teams utilize state-of-the-art technology to examine and study underwater archaeological findings to bring them to the public, Chen Bowen reports in Qionghai, Hainan.

In the waters 150 kilometers southeast of Sanya, South China's Hainan province, lie two ancient shipwrecks enveloped in a shroud of mystery, resting beneath 1,500 meters of deep blue sea.

The shipwrecks, discovered in October 2022 and traced back to the middle of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), have been named by researchers as "Northwest Continental Slope No 1 and No 2 Shipwrecks in the South China Sea".

The two shipwreck sites are relatively well-preserved and contain a wealth of cultural artifacts with a clear historical context, said Song Jianzhong, a researcher at the National Centre for Archaeology of the National Cultural Heritage Administration.