Banpo

At Banpo near Xi'an, this guide starts with Mao Zedong's claim that the excavated Neolithic village proved a six-thousand-year-old matriarchy without property or oppression, a story cast into the museum's reconstructed pit houses and fish-patterned pottery since 1958. It follows two researchers who returned to the actual skeletons from the two hundred and fifty graves outside the moat in 1993, simply counting who was buried there and at what age. The old slogans still hang on the walls and loudspeakers regardless of what the count showed. Trace the moat's edge yourself before stepping into the burial ground.