via Xinhua, 25 July 2021: Featuring the Chinese ceramics in the Philippine National Museum of Anthropology, many of which come from the Quanzhou, a newly-listed Unesco World Heritage Site.
Bobby Orillaneda, a senior researcher of the Philippine National Museum of Anthropology, fell in love with ancient Chinese ceramics in 1999 when he joined a shipwreck excavation in Palawan, an archipelagic province in the Southeast Asian country.
As a ceramic researcher and head of the museum’s maritime and underwater heritage division, Orillaneda said China’s ceramics collections of the museum date back to nearly 1,000 years ago or the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties.
The ancient Chinese ceramics, most of which were found in the Philippines either inland sites or in shipwreck sites, are “very good evidence of the thriving maritime trade between China and the rest of the world, including the Philippines,” he told Xinhua in an interview.
“Most of the collections here are from the port of Quanzhou since the 13th century, when there was increased maritime traffic among China, the Philippines, and the rest of the Southeast Asian region. Ceramics from different areas of China would be carried to Quanzhou first and then shipped towards different destinations such as here in the Philippines,” Orillaneda said.
