Dating from around the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, 38 sites of rock art and their associated karst, riverine and tableland landscape depict ceremonies that have been interpreted as portraying the bronze drum culture once prevalent across southern China. Located on steep cliffs cut through the karst landscape by the meandering Zuojiang River and its tributary Mingjiang River, the pictographs were created by the Luoyue people illustrating their life and rituals.
Criterion (iii): The Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape, with its special combination of landscape and rock art, vividly conveys the vigorous spiritual and social life of the Luoyue people who lived along the Zuojiang River from the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. It is now the only witness to the tradition.
Criterion (vi): The images of Zuojiang Huashan depicting drums and related elements are symbolic records directly associated with the bronze drum culture once widespread in the region. Today bronze drums are still respected as symbols of power in southern China.
Among all the World Heritage sites, almost 50 contain rock art, specifically 48 of them. In most of them, the rock art itself is the World Heritage, while in others it is one of the added values of a landscape or natural area which is also categorised as a World Heritage Site.
Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape Located on the steep cliffs in the border regions of southwest China, these 38 sites of rock art illustrate the life and rituals of the Luoyue people. They date from the period around the 5th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. In a surrounding landscape of karst, rivers and plateaux, they depict ceremonies which have been interpreted as portraying the bronze drum culture once prevalent across southern China. This cultural landscape is the only remains of this culture today.
The Huashan rock art site may be considered to be one of the most impressive pre-Historic painted panels of the world. The site is located in the Zuojiang River valley of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a border area of south-west China, neighbouring Vietnam.
Huashan is called Pay Laiz in the local Zhuang language, which literally means 'a mountain with colourful paintings'. On the precipitous western cliff of the Huashan mountain, which overhangs the river, more than 1800 rock art motifs are painted, covering an area of more than 4000 square metres. It is thought to be the largest rock art panel in the world.
The paintings of the Huashan rock art site are highly standardised. All the images are monochrome, painted in a brownish-red colour, and represented in two dimensions without a sense of perspective or depth of field.
Members of the Bradshaw Foundation - Damon de Laszlo, Dr. Jean Clottes, Dr. Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak, Li Hui and Peter Robinson - were invited to the site in 2014 in conjunction with with the Committee of Peoples' Congress and the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to help launch the UNESCO World Heritage declaration campaign for the Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape.
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→ The Huashan Rock Art Site
→ Sacred Meeting Place for Sky, Water and Earth
→ Introduction to the Huashan Rock Art Site
→ UNESCO World Heritage Site
→ Huashan Rock Art Gallery
→ Huashan Local Ethnic Culture
→ Huashan Historical Background
→ Religious Beliefs of the Luo Yue
→ Cosmology of Huashan Rock Art
→ 38 Huashan Rock Art Sites
→ Protection of Zuojiang Huashan
→ Wushan Rock Art
→ China Rock Art Archive
→ Bradshaw Foundation
→ Rock Art Network
