Digging hard for clues to the past

In 2005, Mei worked at the Qiliting site in Changxing county, Huzhou, for more than a year. The excavation found more than 800 stone artifacts, which indicated early human settlement in the region.

His sketches of the relics and site maps were used in related reports and books.

One day in August in 2012, when sketching a round stone axe unearthed from the Zhuangqiaofen site in Pinghu, Zhejiang, Mei found some signs faintly carved on the item, which might be the characters used by ancient people. That was a moment when, Mei says, he felt the charm of archaeology in connecting the present and the past.