秦汉造船工场遗址, Ancient shipyard archaeological site in Guangdong, China.

The ancient shipyard in Guangdong is an excavated site with remains of workshops, foundations, and tools from the Qin and Han periods. The finds show how boats were built and what materials craftspeople worked with during that time.

The shipyard was built during Qin Shi Huang's campaign to unify Lingnan, and was abandoned in the reigns of Emperor Wen and Jing of the Western Han. Excavated in 1975, the site lies on a grey-black clay layer, with three east-west slipways; the southernmost, No. 1, is estimated at over 100 m long. Finds include Qin and Han half-liang coins, Qin-Han roof tiles and early Western Han pottery.

The shipyard demonstrates how important boat building was to ancient Chinese society and the skills workers needed to master. You can see here how people constructed vessels and what tools they relied on for their craft.

The excavated slipways were permanently backfilled for protection, so the remains are no longer visible on site. The location lies in the area of Zhongshan 4th Road, at the former Guangzhou Children's Park and the municipal culture bureau premises, now the Xinde business building and the Nanyue Palace site. Slipways 2 and 3 were never dug out because of nearby houses.

Only the southernmost of the three parallel slipways, No. 1, has been excavated; it is estimated at over 100 metres long, while slipways No. 2 and No. 3 were left unopened because of nearby houses. The excavated section has since been permanently backfilled for protection, so the site survives buried beneath the modern city.