Interview: Huashan Rock Paintings show unique art to Milan Expo visitors: Chinese official

Visitors of China Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 have made acquainted with a unique art in the world, the Huashan Rock Paintings, Li Kang, Vice Governor of China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said here on Wednesday.

Many international guests on the opening day of the Guangxi Week at the Italian world exposition watched with particular interest the Huashan Rock Painting Exhibition at the China Pavilion, which reproduces the rock paintings on both banks of the Zuojiang River in Chongzuo, a city of Guangxi.

These ancient paintings, all found to be some 20-40 meters above the river, some highest being 120 meters above the river, present unsolved mysteries.

"Almost the totality of paintings in other parts of the world are found in desert regions or in caves, which made it possible to have them preserved through thousands of years," Li told Xinhua in an interview after the Guangxi Week opening ceremony.

Instead the Guangxi paintings were found in a sub-tropical region, on the cliffs on both sides of the Zuojiang River, mostly on rocks at the place where the river turns, Li highlighted.

"It often heavily rains in that area and winds are strong. But the paintings preserved very well and did not lose their colors for as many as 1,800-2,000 years," she stressed.

"We invited the world's experts to analyze the paintings, and all of them were highly impressed," Li went on saying.

For this reason, she told Xinhua, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage decided to apply Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape as the sole item applied by China for the World Cultural Heritage List of 2016.

Should the application be successful, she added, "not only the World Cultural Heritage List would be enriched with a site which has no equals in the world, but China would have its first cave paintings in the Heritage List, because China has 47 listed sites but no cave paintings have been included so far."

The Huashan Rock Art is not only a crystallization of wisdom of the Chinese people, but also a precious treasure in the history of agricultural civilization development, one of the central issues of the Expo Milano 2015 dedicated to sustainable nutrition and healthy food for everybody.

The paintings are also the only ones in the world that take the symbol of squatting figure as their basic matrix. These symbols all have two hands stretching on the two sides horizontally but bending at the elbows. They squat, kneeling down similar to frogs in shape, reflecting the culture cherished by ancient Luoyue people who worshipped the Frog God in the rice-farming culture.

With recording sacrifice rites as the theme, the paintings depict the mental life and society of ancient Luoyue people, ancestors of today's Zhuang ethnic group.

"The fact that they preserved for such a long time highlights that they were bound to worship, so that nobody dared to destroy them," Li went on explaining to Xinhua.

The Huashan Rock Painting exhibition at the China Pavilion comprises high-emulation cliffs and animations, reflecting the agricultural aesthetics unique to Huashan Rock Art and the long-standing farming culture of the ancient Luoyue people.

"The mountains and the waters which surround the paintings are such a splendor ... and the paintings harmoniously melt with this landscape, in fact they have been melting for some 2,000 years," Li concluded.

The vice governor led a delegation of over 100 representatives involving heads from various government agencies and institutions of agriculture, trade and investment, trade promotion and culture, as well as entrepreneurs and performers to the Milan Expo's Guangxi Week. Enditem