Paintings on silk tend to degenerate fairly quickly, generally lasting a century or two, with the oldest surviving examples (safely buried underground) dating back no further than two thousand years to the Han dynasty. But ceramic works can keep their color for millennia, and today we can still appreciate works of colored pottery and black pottery from as far back as six and seven thousand years ago.
絹紙繪畫的保存不易，一般上百年就要腐朽，有幸深埋地底的，最遠不過兩千年前的漢代帛畫。然而，陶瓷卻可以數千年顏色不變，史前時代的彩陶、黑陶，經過六、七千年，猶能呈現當時的樣貌於今人。