The No. 1 Dragon of China is actually in this small former coal-mining city in Liaoning?

Fuxin, Liaoning, hides an incredibly stunning historical and cultural treasure trove: the Zhaohai Site! This place has 8,000 years of history. It is an important Neolithic settlement site in the West Liao River Basin and the origin of Hongshan Culture! Archaeologist Mr. Su Bingqi called it "the hometown of the jade dragon and the origin of civilization!" 🎉 🐉 [The No. 1 Dragon of China makes a stunning appearance] 🐉 Behind the Zhaohai Site Museum, a 19.7m-long stacked dragon lies on the hillside. This giant dragon is known as the "No. 1 Dragon of China." This stone dragon is made of stacked reddish-brown basalt natural stones, with its head facing southwest and its tail facing northeast. The dragon's head and body are densely stacked with stones, while the tail is more loosely stacked. The overall shape shows an image of raising its head, opening its mouth, bending its body, arching its back, and the tail being faintly visible, giving people a sense of a giant dragon taking off, with its head visible but not its tail. This is the earliest and largest dragon image discovered in China so far. It not only provides a concrete shape for the dragon culture of the Chinese nation, but also witnesses the formation of the primitive religious concepts in the hearts of the Zhaohai people 8,000 years ago. 🎨 [Dragon-patterned pottery shards, artistic treasures] 🎨 The dragon-patterned pottery shards in the Zhaohai Site exhibition hall are also very interesting! Two pottery shards created with relief techniques, one is a curled dragon tail, and the other is a coiled dragon body, with the dragon scale patterns clearly visible. These are the most primitive and core elements of the dragon image, showing the superb artistic skills of the Zhaohai people 8,000 years ago. Every detail reveals an ancient and mysterious atmosphere, making people can't help but take a few more glances! 👀 💎 [The world's first real jade, exquisite craftsmanship] 💎 The jade artifacts at the Zhaohai Site are mainly milky white, light green, and yellowish-brown. Scientific analysis shows that they are tremolite and actinolite nephrite. This shows that the Zhaohai ancestors had a fairly high level of jade material identification, and had long bid farewell to the stage of unclear mixing of real and fake jade. Jade pendants, jade spoons, jade chisels, jade axes, jade tubes, jade rings... each one is small and exquisite, and processed in a regular manner. The cutting marks are obvious, and the cutting, drilling, and polishing techniques are mature. This shows that the Zhaohai people 8,000 years ago had already mastered the processing technology of cutting materials with jade sand and water as a medium. 🐍 [Snake-biting-frog pottery pot, mysterious legend] 🐍 A very special cylindrical pottery pot was also unearthed at the Zhaohai Site. On the relief on the lower half, a snake is tightly biting the hind leg of a toad. This confirms what Wen Yiduo said in "Fu Xi Kao" that "the prototype of the dragon is a snake," which echoes the dragon patterns on the pottery shards and the stone dragon, adding a bit of mystery to this site, as if telling an unknown story from 8,000 years ago... 📖 🏅️: National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit 📍 Location: Zhaohai Village, Shala Town, Mongolian Autonomous County, Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, located on the west side of National Highway 101 🎟️ Tickets: Free to the public, no reservation required, admission with ID card ⏰ Time: 9:00–16:00 daily