On June 25, 2001, China's State Council announced the fifth batch of "Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level", among which was the site of the Dongqian Lake stone carvings.

The stone carvings are regarded as the "Terracotta Warriors of Jiangnan (South of the Yangtze River)". The Yinxian People's Government first ordered a field survey in 1976 after a large number of stone carvings were found in the Dongqian Lake area.

In 1982, the site was made a county-level cultural relics protection site before the Zhejiang Provincial People's Government designated it a key cultural relics protection site at the provincial level in 1997.

Why is it that that were there such important historical relics of such a great quantity in Dongqian Lake, a relatively unknown place? With this question, I set out on a treasure hunt around the lake.

Located in the southeast of Ningbo city, Dongqian Lake is about 15 kilometers away from the urban center and is the largest natural freshwater lake in the province of Zhejiang.

Guo Moruo, a leading Chinese author in the 20th century, once praised it as "similar in spirit to the Taihu Lake and as charming as the West Lake". Indeed, surrounded by plenty of mountains, hills, rivers, dykes and embankments, Dongqian Lake looks more like a traditional Chinese painting.                 

The Southern Song Stone Carving Park, as the site is now called, is my destination. It is situated in Shangshuixia village on the side of Huangmei Mountain. Standing in the square of the park are the pillars, on which a couplet bears this engraving: "The North Has Terracotta Warriors; The South Has Southern Song Stone Carvings."

In early December 1993, a team of experts on Song history, archaeology and arts from all over the province gathered at the Dongqian Lake area and conducted a thorough investigation of the many stone carvings and sculptures found in the ceremonial burial chamber here. After repeated comparison and appraisal, they determined that most of them were stone carvings of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) that date back nearly 800 years.

The Dongqian Lake stone carvings comprise two categories: stone architecture and stone statues. The stone architecture is composed of stone halls, stone pavilions, stone archways, stone chairs, stalagmites and stone drums, among others. The stone statues include those resembling scholar officials, military officers, standing horses, squatting tigers and kneeling sheep. In the Southern Song Stone Carving Park are 100 or so of these stone carvings, half of the total that have been discovered.

Stone carvings carry the memories of ancient human civilizations. Stone carving culture uses the shaping of stones to reflect the beliefs, artistic perceptions and production technologies of a certain period, and is of historical value. The Southern Song stone carvings are no exception. They are a systematical record of some of its rules and customs, its ideology and artistic style.

The statues, for instance, hold important symbolic meanings. Scholar officials, military officers, standing horses, squatting tigers and kneeling sheep represent loyalty, bravery, righteousness, integrity and filial piety respectively. In the Southern Song, civil officials enjoyed a higher status than their military counterpart, as the imperial court deliberately suppressed the influence of the army. Therefore, statues of scholar officials were place in front of those of military officers in the tombs. With regard to the animals, Song people believed that their designated symbolic traits were closely related to their nature. For example, a lamb kneeling to suck its mother's milk showed respect to one's mother.

On the other hand, a comparative study on the patterns of the stone carvings has shown their evolution and development throughout the Song Dynasty (960-1279). In the Northern Song period (960-1127), China had issued the world's first set of building standards titled Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architectural Methods or State Building Standards). The 10-odd patterns on the Dongqian Lake stone carvings, such as clouds, water ripples, rocks and trees, can all be found in Yingzao Fashi, and were used as auspicious patterns. The hat styles of civil officials, the armors and weapons of military officers seen on the stone statues are also completely consistent with historical records and paintings, and the carving skills were second to none.