Taming the Wilds of Prehistory—Shi-Shang
Liu Yingfeng / photos Chuang Kung-ju / tr. by Geof Aberhart
June 2014
Two decades ago Kiko Hsiao, now CEO of the company Shi-Shang, was a student at Taipei College of Maritime Technology. Even then he was deeply interested in the mysterious world of fossils. This passion later took him to Germany, where he learned fossil restoration skills that he brought back to Taiwan and which would see him published in prestigious periodicals Nature and Science in 2004.
Today Hsiao leads a team from his workshop in Tucheng, New Taipei City, overseeing everything from restoration to display and sale in their unique combination of the archeological and the commercial. Thanks to their work, Hsiao and company give ordinary people a glimpse into long-distant worlds where dinosaurs or mammoths roamed free.
Wearing ear protectors and wielding an air scribe, a fossil restoration expert with over ten years’ experience delicately works over a slab of rock in a Tucheng workshop. To the sounds of the air scribe’s whirring engine, the arms of a sea lily fossilized over 500 million years ago slowly come into focus.
The professionals at Shi-Shang, which was founded in 1997, have brought tens of thousands of different fossils back to seeming life, from things as small as ammonites and trilobites to massive tyrannosaurs and mammoths.
Technicians work with great care and precision to restore fossils of prehistoric creatures such as ammonites, trilobites and psittacosaurs.
In 1986, while he was a student at Taipei College of Maritime Technology, Kiko Hsiao was recommended by an alumnus of the school for a part-time position at a factory that polished semi-precious stones. This was his first exposure to fossils, particularly agate and silica plant fossils, used to make jewelry. After graduating, Hsiao began working in crystal purchasing, seizing on the chance it presented to see and examine exhibitions of fossils. It was at one such exhibition that he happened to meet a visiting group from Germany, the group that would ultimately be responsible for his current career.
While continuing to work, Hsiao also took advantage of a break in his schedule to accompany the German group to Holzmaden, a German town known for its large numbers of well-preserved Jurassic fossils. There he learned fossil restoration, a skill not widely taught and with only five private teams active worldwide.
Hsiao remembers how spending ten or more hours a day practicing was entirely normal, but despite the workload, it also presented a great opportunity to see for himself the high level of skill shown by the Germans. “Fossil collection and restoration in Taiwan at the time was very casual, digging wherever you wanted, but in Germany they would always have a detailed plan laid out even before they started digging. Then they would look for the most appropriate methods and set about restoration. What I ended up bringing back with me to Taiwan was essentially a whole new approach.”
After starting his own company in Taiwan, Hsiao set about importing the detailed German methods in order to preserve the lines and pores of the fossils. He switched the standard abrasive blasting medium from sand to less damaging baking soda. While this process takes three times as long, Hsiao says, “The contrast was immediately obvious, as those dull fossils suddenly transformed into works of art.”
Without fancy instruments, the restorers had to rely on their experience, reading the lines and geological stratum of each piece to figure out what species it could be and where all the parts should be. However, just a slight slip of the hand or a misreading of the stratum or color of the rock could render a fossil virtually unidentifiable. “Without any books on or specialist education in fossil restoration available, we had to go by experience,” says Hsiao.
After its opening in 1995, Hsiao’s little workshop started by taking on just a few contracts while he continued to visit international fossil shows and expos to find new fossils. Of those shows, top of the list for Hsiao was the six-decade-old Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase held in Tucson, Arizona.
Hsiao explains that the Tucson show started when a group of local farmers had some free time and decided to set up stalls to show off and trade the various minerals and fossils they had dug up on their land. The show’s reputation grew, attracting amateur and professional buyers as well as researchers. With no kind of third-party oversight, buyers must use their own judgment, and the line between valuable fossil and worthless rock is a fine one.
Technicians work with great care and precision to restore fossils of prehistoric creatures such as ammonites, trilobites and psittacosaurs.
With so few private organizations skilled at restoring fossils, private collectors and museums of natural history around the world have hired Shi-Shang to clean and restore larger fossils, including triceratopses and tyrannosaurs.
With this kind of experience, Shi-Shang was also able to establish a partnership with researcher Cheng Yannian of Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science, authoring research papers that went on to be published in major international periodicals Nature and Science.
Back in 2003, Shi-Shang discovered the fossil of a 200-million-year-old female keichousaurus with six fetuses among a pile of unrestored fossils. After restoration, this fossil became evidence of the earliest change from egg laying to live birth in marine reptiles.
But the fossil Hsiao is most proud of is that of an oviraptor with two eggs, the most precious fossil Shi-Shang has worked on.
In 2003, Hsiao received a batch of rocks from the US, amongst which he made a rare find: In the fossilized pelvic bone of an oviraptor from some 70 million years ago, Hsiao found a pair of completely preserved fossilized eggs, with shells.
With help from Cheng Yannian of the National Museum of Natural Science and experts from the Canadian Museum of Nature, it was determined that the fossilized oviducts and eggs provided evidence that each of a female dinosaur’s oviducts could lay only one egg at a time, further supporting the hypothesis that birds evolved from theropods. In 2010, Shi-Shang’s restoration team also worked on a batch of rocks from the coastlines of the Penghu archipelago, and found fossilized remains of tigers, elephants, horses, deer, and other animals dating back as far as 40,000 years ago, thus documenting the area’s history as part of the Eurasian Plate.
Technicians work with great care and precision to restore fossils of prehistoric creatures such as ammonites, trilobites and psittacosaurs.
To help promote understanding of paleontology and fossils in Taiwan, in 2003 Hsiao founded Shi-Shang Science Shop, selling natural science products and letting people take a little of the museum home with them.
In the shop, customers can immerse themselves in the distant past amongst the massive models of fossil dinosaurs. The store has also arranged with major science museums and centers like the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung and Taipei’s National Taiwan Science Education Center to sell replicas of exhibits, offering a unique retail experience completely different from your usual museum gift shop. However, this expansion of the business also led to operating costs double or tripling and some outlets doing less than stellar trade. The early days of the store’s operation were anything but easy.
However, those hard times didn’t last long. Soon enough Shi-Shang was able to catch the attention of the Eslite group, which at the time was actively expanding across Taiwan. Hsiao remarks that although back in 2004 Shi-Shang won the operating rights for the National Museum of Natural Science store over Eslite, the two sides have maintained a good relationship since arranging for Shi-Shang’s products to be stocked in Eslite stores. Thanks to this Shi-Shang has enjoyed a growing level of visibility through Eslite’s strong distribution channels.
With its wealth of knowledge, global network, and unrestored fossils accumulated from around the world, Shi-Shang and its almost 10,000-strong fossil collection have become a major backstage player in big paleontological exhibitions at home and abroad.
For the permanent exhibition of dinosaur fossils in the old Land Bank building on Taipei’s Guanqian Road, everything from the exhibits, lighting and displays to the guides and information brochures was planned by Shi-Shang. When the Chi Mei Museum was preparing its new natural sciences section in 2005, they sought out the help of Shi-Shang, and to this day Hsiao continues to work as a consultant with them.
Having already helped people bring the museum home, now Hsiao’s goal is to take the museum to the department store. This way, while shoppers are getting all the usual goodies, they can also learn a bit about the prehistoric world.
In 2005, Shi-Shang set up an exhibition in the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store in Taipei, drawing almost 10,000 visitors. In 2013, the company organized an exhibition of mammoths which was held at the Taipei World Trade Center and broke records for attendance, with over 500,000 people visiting in just four days.
“A decade or more ago, mothers would point to fossils and tell their children, ‘Oh, those are all fake.’ In the past few years, we’ve heard that less and less,” says Hsiao. From a niche interest to a popular attraction, fascination with the prehistoric world has begun to bloom. And, as Hsiao remarks, Shi-Shang has played an important part in promoting it.
Today Shi-Shang is continuing to strengthen its business, with more than 40 stores around Taiwan carrying their products. Last year, that growth branched out in a new direction as Shi-Shang expanded into mainland China.
The permanent exhibition of dinosaur fossils and related items at Taipei’s old Land Bank building, curated by Shi-Shang, is quite the spectacle. Pictured here is the section devoted to bird specimens.
Although he has over two decades of experience with fossils, Hsiao has not sat on his laurels. Not only has he returned to school to study toward a degree in geology from Chinese Culture University, he is also working on creating a world-class paleontological restoration center. Last year Shi-Shang packed up its small workshop in Jiangzicui, New Taipei City, to move to its new 1300-plus-square-meter home in Tucheng.
“We’re still a way off the dream right now though,” says Hsiao. “We’re hoping that in the future we’ll be able to bring restoration, exhibition, and sales all under one roof.” Shi-Shang has blazed a trail in bringing the prehistoric world back to life, giving the public the chance to step back in time and see where it all began.
