Taihu Rock Presented as Gift to San Antonio

A six-and-a-half-ton Taihu rock was presented as a gift to the city of San Antonio, Texas on November 6 to celebrate the sister-city relationship between San Antonio and the Chinese city of Wuxi.

The Taihu rock from the Taihu Lake region in China’s Jiangsu Province will have a permanent new home – the San Antonio Museum of Art. Along with the rock, 26 works of Chinese painting, calligraphy, ceramics, jade carving, gold and silver from the Wuxi Museum will be put on exhibit in the San Antonio Museum of Art until next March. Some of the works are national treasures that have never been displayed overseas before.

Sun Guoxiang, vice secretary general of the standing committee of Wuxi municipal people’s congress, said that since Wuxi and San Antonio forged a sistercity relationship in 2012, cultural, economic, and educational exchanges between the two cities have been more and more frequent. “This Taihu rock will bring us one step closer to each other,” he said.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the Taihu rock has become a window into China. “Our two cities share friendship and dedication to bring communities together through art, history, and a mutual desire to learn from one another,” he said.

Chinese Consul General in Houston Cai Wei said in a speech that the dedication of the Taihu rock “is a symbol of building up more connections and platforms to facilitate people-to-people exchanges and mutual understandings.”

Dozens of people from the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, the Wuxi delegation, and the San Antonio Museum of Art as well as some local art enthusiasts attended the ceremony.