text: China has long been considered the exception to the general use of bloomeries. The Chinese are thought to have skipped the bloomery process completely, starting with the blast furnace and the finery forge to produce wrought iron; by the fifth century BC, metalworkers in the southern state of Wu had invented the blast furnace and the means to both cast iron and to decarburize the carbon-rich pig iron produced in a blast furnace to a low-carbon, wrought iron-like material. Recent evidence, however, shows that bloomeries were used earlier in ancient China, migrating in from the west as early as 800 BC, before being supplanted by the locally developed blast furnace. Supporting this theory was the discovery of "more than ten" iron-digging implements found in the tomb of Duke Jing of Qin (d. 537 BCE), whose tomb is located in Fengxiang County, Shaanxi (a museum exists on the site today).