Yang Ningguo: Preserving Ningxia’s heritage for over three decades

For 35 years, Yang Ningguo has walked through the hills and villages of Pengyang county in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region, searching for traces of the past hidden beneath the soil.

Since entering the field of cultural relics preservation in 1990, Yang, a research fellow at the Pengyang Museum, has devoted much of his life to archaeology and heritage protection. Over the decades, he has worn out more than 30 walking sticks and over 100 pairs of sneakers while traveling across remote mountains and rural fields. He has filled more than 100 field notebooks and taken over 100,000 photographs and thousands of minutes of video footage. For Yang, every journey into the countryside has been part of a lifelong mission to preserve the region’s historical memory.

Yang Ningguo, a research fellow at the Pengyang Museum, receives the title of “Saishang Craftsmen” in recognition of his lifelong dedication to archaeology and heritage protection at the 2025 “Saishang Craftsmen” award ceremony in Yinchuan, capital of Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region on Oct 31, 2025.

Unearthing history beneath the earth

Yang’s persistence has contributed to some of the most significant archaeological discoveries in southern Ningxia.

Among them was the discovery of the Ling’er Paleolithic site, which pushed back evidence of human activity in the Guyuan area by some 20,000 years and filled a major gap in Paleolithic archaeology in southern Ningxia.

Over the years, Yang has participated in and led excavations at 12 major archaeological sites, including Dashigou, Xiaohewan, Haiziyuan and Yaoheyuan, helping reconstruct key chapters of the region’s ancient history.

The Yaoheyuan site, dating to the Shang and Zhou (c.11th century-256 BC) dynasties, proved particularly significant. Archaeologists believe the discovery demonstrates that the western frontier of the Western Zhou Dynasty had already extended into the Liupan Mountain area. It also pushed Ningxia’s recorded administrative history back by more than 1,000 years.

The site was later named one of China’s top 10 archaeological discoveries of 2017, marking a milestone in Ningxia’s archaeological research.

Yang Ningguo conducts cultural relics research.

Protecting relics, preserving memory

Beyond excavation work, Yang has devoted himself to cultural heritage protection at the grassroots level.

He has delivered more than 50 public lectures on China’s law on cultural relics protection and distributed hundreds of thousands of informational materials to raise public awareness.

Yang has also assisted police in solving more than 20 cultural relic-related cases and helped recover 563 lost relics.

To strengthen long-term protection efforts, he helped establish a four-level cultural relics protection network covering county, township, village and community administrations. He also helped improve preservation standards at dozens of protected heritage sites and contributed to the drafting of Pengyang’s master plan for cultural relics protection.

Yang Ningguo (R) conducts cultural relics research with a colleague.

Giving relics a voice

Fieldwork has never kept Yang away from academic research.

Over the past three decades, he has published more than 20 papers in leading Chinese archaeology journals, including Archaeology and Archaeology and Cultural Relics. He also edited and published Chronicles of Pengyang Cultural Relics, the first local cultural relics archive of its kind in Ningxia, along with several other works documenting the region’s historical heritage.

For Yang, research and writing are another way of allowing relics to “speak” to the public.

Building a bridge between past and present

When construction of the Pengyang Museum began in 2014, Yang was involved throughout the entire process, from exhibition planning and design to artifact display.

He helped complete exhibitions spanning some 6,000 square meters, featuring ancient relics, modern historical heritage and interactive displays. He also led efforts to collect and preserve more than 1,000 sets of cultural relics, helping expand the museum’s collection to over 7,000 items, including 40 national first-class relics. In 2021, an innovation studio named after Yang was established in Pengyang, uniting archaeology professionals and cultural heritage preservation.

For the man who has spent decades tracing history across the countryside, the studio represents more than recognition. It stands as another bridge connecting the region’s ancient past with its present and future.