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There's a museum in eastern China where ancient creatures tell their stories, creatures that lived millions of years before humans walked the earth, dinosaurs that once roamed the land beneath our feet.
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And the woman who curates this collection, a designer from Hong Kong, didn't set out to build a museum at all.
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She followed her husband to a small ancient town.
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They had a different project in mind when they moved there, but sometimes the work chooses you.
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Today's episode takes us to Keqiao, an ancient town in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, a place with 1,700 years of history.
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And if you're wondering what fossils have to do with an ancient water town, you're about to find out.
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I'm Amelia, and this is Voices of Inspiration.
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Everyone has a story to tell.
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We connect and relate to one another when we share our stories.
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My name is Amelia Owl, and I am your host of Voices of Inspiration.
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Join me as I share stories of friends, family, and strangers through my everyday life and travels.
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We will laugh, possibly cry, or walk away feeling connected more than ever to those around you and ready to be the change our world needs.
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Everyone has a story to tell.
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What's yours?
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Most people don't think about what lies beneath their feet.
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We walk on sidewalks, drive on roads, build our homes on solid ground, and we rarely consider the deep time embedded in that earth, the layers of sediment, the compressed remains of ancient life, the story written in stone.
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But in Zhejiang province, that story is particularly rich.
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Dinosaur fossils have been discovered throughout the province, not just scattered fragments, but significant finds that have helped scientists understand what life looked like millions of years ago.
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My guest is Fang Li.
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She's a designer from Hong Kong who, together with her husband, created something unexpected a private fossil museum in Keqiao's ancient town.
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The Pangu Fossil Museum houses over 3,000 specimens.
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It's also a science education center.
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And as of 2024, it's connected to Shaoxing's first museum-themed homestead.
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Cha Chao is definitely one of those towns that exist in layers.
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You walk through the town and you'll see what 1,700 years of continuous life looks like.
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Canals wind through stone pathways, traditional architecture reflects generations of careful preservation.
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But there's another layer to this story, and one that goes much, much deeper.
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Somewhere in this ancient town, past the traditional houses and over the old stone bridges, there's the Pangu Fossil Museum, named for the primordial being from Chinese mythology who separated heaven and earth.
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This isn't a government institution with funding and infrastructure.
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It's not affiliated with a university.
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It's a private collection that two people turned into a museum because they believed that these ancient specimens deserve to be seen, to be studied, and to inspire wonder.
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I have to admit, I don't think I've ever really seen dinosaurs before.
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Maybe once or twice as a child, if I went to the museum with the school, but nothing like what this museum holds.
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And if you're watching the video version of this episode, you'll be able to see some of those specimens in the videos and photos that I'll share with you.
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If you live in Jejiang, you're walking on ground that literally contains evidence of creatures from 100 million years ago, 150 million years ago, even further back.
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And for many people, especially children, that realization changes something.
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Dinosaurs aren't just creatures from movies.
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They become part of home, part of your own backyard.
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Typically, when we visit museums, we look at the exhibits, maybe we read the plaques.
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I know I do, I have to read every single one.
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Some people don't.
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We take some photos, we leave, and the whole visit might last an hour, maybe two if we're really engaged.
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But what if you could stay?
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That's the idea behind the homestay here.
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Scientists and researchers were visiting the museum, paleontologists from Beijing, experts from other provinces.
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They wanted to spend real time with this collection, have conversations, study specific specimens that they needed somewhere to stay.
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And then it became something more.
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A space where anyone, families, students, curious travelers could extend their experience beyond a brief museum visit.
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Here's something most people don't think about.
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For every fossil in a museum, there are countless others that never make it there.
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Some remain buried, undiscovered, some get destroyed during construction or farming.
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Some end up in private collections where no one will ever see them.
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And some, the scientifically significant ones, go to major institutions for research.
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And this is where someone like Feng Li makes a difference.
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She and her husband could have kept their collection private.
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Many collectors do.
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But they chose to create a public space to share what they've gathered, to build programs that help people understand what these objects mean.
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And that choice does require sacrifice.
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Private museums don't have government funding.
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They operate on admission fees and personal resources.
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And in 2021, I came here with my husband, and we were the founder or creator of this museum.
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The museum's name is Pangu, Fosso Museum.
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And also we set up the homestay.
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This homestay is also the museum-themed homestay here.
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How did your husband's love for fossils first begin?
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And then how did it grow into this museum?
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So what monthai, you know, my husband and I all come from um Hong Kong and we are interior designer.
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And uh, you know, we always uh have a lot of projects, so we will travel uh nationwide, and uh in 1993 we just finished our the project in Shanghai for decorating uh for designing decorating peace hotel in 1993, and uh around that time uh we two both like you know visiting the boutique stores, and my husband just found the first collector, it's uh fos, it's uh dinosaur fos.
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This is his first collect collection, yeah.
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What was it like to design a museum inside of this town?
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Did the surroundings influence your style at all?
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Uh we both like such kind of Jiangnan style.
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You know, Jiangnan style refers to the old buildings or old uh architecture style in Yangtze River Delta in Zhejiang Province, in Jiangsu Province.
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And we are looking for such kind of building to maybe build build a museum or someplace to the a for the collection.
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And uh very fortunately we found Kiao, this scenic spot, because at that time uh the cynic uh Gu Jens this Asian town has already had the 1,700 years old history.
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Yeah, this Asian town.
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And uh very we are very lucky to find such a old building.
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It's it's our it's our dream house, you know, the dream building, and then we redesign it.
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Your museum holds more than 3,000 specimens.
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Is there one fossil that feels especially meaningful to you and your husband?
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We have been asked for several for many times by the visitors, um, such quite such kind of questions.
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It's very hard to say.
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Um every single item in this museum goes has a history beyond that.
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So but every single item is regarded as the treasure for both of us.
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What do you hope visitors learn or feel when they see these ancient pieces from Earth?
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I keep talking, talking, talking uh a lot of many times uh different stories here in the museum, and I hope um I can share what I know from these Asian items to my uh to the audience, to the visitors, to the teenagers, students, kids, and uh um before, in front of the ancient item, uh I really f feel, you know, the human being is so tiny because this Asian item has a long, long, long history, a long, long time earlier than us.
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So I hope everyone here can be very cure curious to explore, to know more uh beyond the human being, too, curious to know more about the life stories and also the thought uh will be inspired.
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Many visitors come here for science, but they leave touched by the story of you and your husband and what you're doing.
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What has surprised you about their reactions?
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Uh what she goes.
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Well, I often share two themes in my classroom.
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One is about the beauty of the Asian items.
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Yeah.
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Um when you when for the for visitors to our uh for visitors in our museum, you will find the display or how I display these items is so different from other museums.
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Uh for example, the light, the the perfect angles, you know.
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And I am the cure curator, the curator of the whole museum.
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So I will put my thoughts and design the whole discipline, yeah, for everyone.
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I think this is very different.
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And another topic I always share with my students is the dinosaurs just underneath our feet.
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Um, especially in recent years, I I I always tell my students, well, uh actually in Zhejiang place, in Zhejiang province, in such a place, there are a lot of dinosaurs fossils just underneath.
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But you you never know that before.
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You you just thought the dinosaurs are far, far, far, far away from here.
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So I hope my sharing could uh could help the kids love or like our homeland.
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Yeah.
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There are a lot of stories to find out.
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Yeah.
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I personally collect antique books.
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It's something I've only gotten into over the last couple of years.
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And I always tell people once that history is gone, once those books are gone, you can't get it back.
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And so I think it's very important that you are working to preserve these items and give them a place to call home because once they're gone, there's no getting them back to share them with a future.
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I'm gonna pause right here for a quick break and we'll be right back.
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Today's episode is supported by China Eastern Airlines.
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They offer three nonstop routes from the United States to Shanghai, Budong, which is how I traveled while I was working on this series.
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China Eastern is headquartered in Shanghai and is one of China's major international carriers.
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The airline operates 108 domestic and overseas branches worldwide and serves destinations across China, Asia, Europe, and other global regions.
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They're also a member of the Sky Team Alliance, partnering with airlines such as Delta and allowing SkyMiles members to earn miles across participating carriers.
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On international flights, China Eastern offers three cabins of service first class suites, business class, and economy.
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Long haul routes include entertainment screens and Wi-Fi's available for purchase in economy class.
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If you're planning travel to Shanghai or exploring future international trips, you can find current schedules and booking information on the China Eastern Airlines website, which I'll link in the notes of this episode.
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Okay, let's get back to it.
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Can you talk just a little bit about what a visitor can expect staying in your home state?
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And then I kept sharing the knowledge with the locals, the the students, also the kids, the families, and then our museum attracts more and more the experts, I mean the scientists from Beijing, from other places, they come here to have discussion with us or just visit our museum.
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I think, wow, uh I should provide, I should offer a place for them to live, and then we have homestay.
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And you know, it's not always happened, right?
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They will not come here every day, every month, and then we say, how about just uh uh open to public?
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And so you see uh the homestay now is to public.
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This is the history of the museum, the knowledge center, and then the homestay, the whole long history.
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Uh the museum focused on the the long history of the ancient items.
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So here you can inagana to um to find out the secret about the earth.
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Yes.
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And for the visitors living in Homestay, um you can see the design, the decoration, or even the living rooms, the names of the l uh the rooms, and you will find out, well, you can uh know the history of the human being.
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Yes.
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So this is the different topic or different focus.
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I think it's uh definitely a very unique idea, and um I absolutely love it because it's of course it's a topic that I'm very interested in.
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So I really am grateful for you embracing me and welcoming me into your home and showing me your collection.
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It's absolutely fascinating, and I feel like I could spend an entire day looking at every single item, probably multiple days.
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I do have one more question, and I asked every single guest this.
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Do you have a favorite quote or words of wisdom, something you live by daily, just a short phrase that you would like to leave behind for viewers or listeners?
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I I don't think about the future, actually.
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I I wouldn't or I won't plan for the future.
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Um for the museum, for the knowledge center, for the homestay.
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It seems like I something just to push me to do that, this kind of things.
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Something just to push me.
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I have to do that.
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But uh for me, once I got a new task, I will try my best.
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You know, it's not built for public.
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It's for you know, for to help the scientists, experts come here and they they have a bedroom to sleep, to live in, right?
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That now I learn the design, I learn the curation, I learn the operation for the homestay.
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I just keep learning and um keep working hard.
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I call that following your intuition or otherwise your inner voice.
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Oh shit.
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Thank you so much for taking time.
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I know that you are so busy with so many things with a museum and a homestay and education center and speaking engagement.
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So I'm really grateful that you took time for me and to welcome us here today.
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I really appreciate what you have done and why you came here.
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I appreciate your your spirit and some your professional this kind of thing.
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Thank you.
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Um I think in um the US and and maybe even in Europe too, not everyone knows about this area of China.
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So I think it's important that we share these stories.
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And I have learned so much this week, and I think that is the beauty of travel and being open to other cultures and embracing learning from those in different parts of the world from us.
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What makes something worth preserving?
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We preserve things that represent human achievement, ancient temples, historic documents, works of art, things that show what we've created, what we've accomplished.
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But fossils are different.
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They're evidence of a world that existed completely independently of us, life that evolved, thrived, and went extinct millions of years before we arrived.
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And yet they deserve preservation for the same fundamental reason.
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They tell us something true.
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They tell us that this earth has a deep history, that life has taken forms we can barely imagine, that the world we know is just one moment in an ongoing story that stretches back further than we can fully comprehend.
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When Fang Li and her husband created the Pangu Museum, they weren't paleontologists, they weren't scientists, they were designers who developed a passion for these ancient objects and then decided that passion should be shared.
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That decision to make the collection public, to create educational programs, to build a space where wonder is possible.
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That's important.
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Meaningful work often emerges from unexpected places.
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You don't need credentials, you don't need institutional backing.
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You don't even need a master plan.
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You need curiosity, you need commitment, and you need to believe that what you're doing has value.
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The Pangu Museum has given thousands of people access to something they wouldn't have encountered otherwise.
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A glimpse into time, a connection to ancient life, a reminder that beneath ordinary ground lies extraordinary history.
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That's not a small thing.
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That's work worth celebrating.
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Thank you for being here with me and listening to this episode of Voices of Inspiration.
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I'll see you next time.
