Essential viewing for anyone heading southwest to the Zuo River, the Provincial Museum on Gucheng Lu (bus #6 from Chanyang Lu; daily 830-noon & 2.30 5pm; RMB8) provides an insight into the enigauatic Dongson culture. Sophisticated metalworkers, the Dongson flourished over two thousand years ago in the Gnangxi-Yunnan-Vietnam border area, and their works were ultimately traded as far afield as Burma, Thailand and Indonesia. The characteristic Dongson artefact is a squat, narrow-waisted bronze drum, finely chased with lively designs of birds, mythical animals, cattle, dancers and stars, sometimes incorporating dioramas on the lid or human and frog figurines sitting on the rmi (suitably for a drum, frogs are associated with the thunder god in Zhuang mythology). They seem to have originated as storage vessels, though according to a Ming historian, the drums 
became a symbol of power: “Those who possess bronze drums are chieftains, and the masses obey them; tbose who have two or three drunrs can style themselves king.” Drums appeared during the Warring States period and were cast locally right up until the late Qing dynasty; their ceremonial use survives among groups of Zhao,Yi, Miao and Yao m China, and on the east- ern Indonesian island of Alor. The museum has dozens of well preserved varieties excavated in Guangxi and elsewhere across the region, including a rather grnseome example from Yunnan whose lid sports a diorama of crowds attending what appears to be a human sacrifice - note the “king” up on the platform, surrounded by drums. Check out the musemn grounds too, with bamboo and pahns growing between full-sized wooden buildings in regional architectural styles: a Zhuang rural theatre, Dong bridge and Miao houses, which are all put to good use by Sanning’s various comnrunities during festivals.
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China Museums .
