Septuagenarian collects 5,000 ancient bricks to build museum in Hubei

Wang introduces the brikcs to visitors.

A 70-year-old man in central China’s Hubei province plans to build a museum that will showcase his collection of over 5,000 ancient bricks, all retrieved in the past four to five years.

The bricks were used to build city walls in the ancient towns of Junzhou and Yunyang during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The walls were eventually dismantled and the bricks became construction material before the two towns were drowned during the construction of a dam in the 1960s. As time passed, some of the bricks were destroyed and others were left to decay.

The bricks, the oldest of which date back over 600 years, will be collected in a museum in Danjiangkou, a city in Hubei, according to Wang’s plan. The museum will host over 30,000 treasures.

Wang's collection

Wang has been engaged in the research of Junzhou history and culture for nearly 20 years. He said the biggest brick from the city wall could weigh as much as 30 kilograms, beating its unearthed Ming Dynasty peers in both size and weight.

Wang has gone into heavy debt collecting the bricks, but he refuses to dwell on that issue.

“The walls of ancient Junzhou and Yunyang, though underwater now, are an important part of Chinese city wall history,” he emphasized.