The complex, hidden in 15 small mounds at Hongshan Township of Jiangsu's Wuxi City, revealed seven ancient tombs of nobles just before the construction of an ambitious economic development zone was about to begin. Archaeologists have confirmed the tombs are heritages of the State of Yue during the Warring States Period (475-221BC).

From the differences in size and the numbers of funereal objects, the tombs are divided into ranks of small, medium, large and super-large, indicating the tomb owners probably came from five levels of the social strata. The largest one is inferior only to the mausoleum of the King of Yue, which, located in Shaoxing of the neighboring Zhejiang Province, is the largest Yue tomb ever found so far.

The site first came to light four years ago, a few days before the Spring Festival in 2001 when two young men approached the Xishan District Office of Cultural Heritage in Wuxi with two pieces of muddy pottery (still wet from being just dug up) that seemed to be ancient musical instruments.

Zou Yijun, director of the Office, and his colleagues immediately went to the location of the find. To their delight, they found other broken pieces of ancient pottery. Following standard procedures, Zou, along with a team from the Archaeology Institute of Nanjing Museum, began an official excavation of the site two years later in March 2003, which has lasted for 24 months so far.

The site, which eventually stretched to 24 square kilometers, untombed more than 2,000 relics, of which over 1,000 pieces are porcelains with mature, delicate craftsmanship. More strikingly, the unearthed 500-odd porcelain musical instruments in 10 varieties make the tombs the largest underground storehouse of ancient instruments ever discovered. A good many high-grade celadon (a kind of greenish glaze) sacrificial vessels, musical instruments, and jade ware have been confirmed as being discovered for the first time.

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