Accouterments of beauty that tell a dynasty's tale

Phoenix hairpins.[Photo provided to China Daily]

According to Zhao, culturally and artistically, Song has been sending ripples far into history, in fact much further than its successor may have wished to see.

"The flowers and butterflies in the Song paintings started to blossom and flutter on the metal jewelry designs of Yuan," she says. "The beauty of Song was gradually picked up, bit by bit, long after the demise of the empire."

And it was not just the jewelry. The Mongol rulers made Beijing their capital. And except for a relatively brief 50 years, Beijing was also the capital for the successive Ming and Qing dynasties. Yet Jiangnan, including Hangzhou and the surrounding area, continued to be the country's cultural hotbed

In 1488, a little more than 200 years after the fall of Song, a Korean boarding a ship landed on China's eastern coast by accident and traveled through what was once Southern Song's heartland. His memoir is now the basis for another exhibition at the Zhejiang Museum.

One thing that Shi wishes to emphasize is that although Song has gone down in history as a fragile beauty, in reality the economy boomed and people enjoyed affluent lives at the time.

"Before Song, mining was state controlled," Shi says. "The Song emperors opened the mining and smelting sector, including that of gold and silver, to private interests. Such policy had undoubtedly stimulated the making and use of jewelry."

Today these delicate hairpins and earrings from Song lie in the museum, with a patina that echoes their faint glimmer and tales that tell of a bygone era.