"In the Ming Dynasty, large quantities of Longquan celadon were transported via the Grand Canal from Zhejiang to the capital as tribute or other places for sale. When porcelain ships arrived in Huai'an, checks were made to get rid of those defective or broken ones," Zhang said. "The accumulation weighed more than 20 tons, begging the question of how large the transportation scale really was on the Grand Canal."

The curator argued that the archeological finding is another testimony to Huai'an being a water transport hub with active commodity circulation hundreds of years ago.