The Western Han Nanyuewang Museum

This guide to the Western Han Nanyuewang Museum in Guangzhou opens on a turtle stew still sitting in its bronze pot when archaeologists broke into a sealed chamber in 1983, workers having cut into Elephant Hill for a hotel foundation and struck seven tombs instead. It follows Zhao Mo, second ruler of the breakaway kingdom of Nanyue, and the working kitchen buried with him, stocked mid-shift with hundreds of birds, shellfish and unfinished fish, plus fifty-one bronze tripods and jars big enough to keep a court drinking all night. A silver box nearby, worked in a style with no ancestor in Chinese art, hints at how far this southern court's table reached beyond its own borders.