Construction of the project is divided into two phases. It took 10 years to complete the first phase of the museum, which covers a floor space of 11,000 square meters, said Jiang Jilin, chairman ofthe Ebony Culture Museum Co. The first phase cost an investment of 120 million yuan(about 15 million U.S.dollars).

The second-phase, covering 1.3 hectares of land, will cost 80 million yuan(about ten million U.S. dollars) to build and is expected to be completed at the end of 2007.

The two-story museum houses 381 pieces of ebony artworks. It aims to collect, study and display ebony sculpture works.

Ebony, with another name of"dark heavy wood", is a kind of rare species used for making high-grade furniture and Buddhist images.

After being buried under riverbed silt for tens of thousand years as a result of diastrophism, large tracts of ancient trees were turned into ebony when brought to light by quarry workers, Jiang said. Enditem