The Jinsha Site Museum in Chengdu, Sichuan province, has been holding Southwest China's largest bronzeware exhibition ahead of the start of the FISU World University Games on Friday.

The exhibition, which began on May 27 and will run through to Aug 27, has brought together 294 cultural relics from the Neolithic Age to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). They are from 32 cultural institutions in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Chongqing municipality.

Southwest China, which has been inhabited by many ethnic groups since ancient times, has rich nonferrous metal resources, and saw the emergence of a splendid bronze culture, says Zhu Zhangyi, curator of the Jinsha Site Museum.

The bronze exhibits are drawn from cultural institutions and the latest archaeological discoveries, including a bronze kneeling figure with a twisted head and a distinctive bronze statue unearthed from the Sanxingdui Ruins in Guanghan, Sichuan province, in recent years.

The relics show the social outlook, religious beliefs and artistic aesthetics of the era in Southwest China and reveal the development pattern of the diversity and integration of Chinese civilization, Zhu says.

The Sanxingdui Ruins were discovered in 1929 by a farmer digging a ditch in his fields.

Findings confirmed the ruins, established between 2,800 and 4,800 years ago, housed the remains of a city that was the political, economic and cultural center of the ancient Shu (ancient name for Sichuan) state.