In the mid 1400s, a Chinese merchant ship laden with 750,000 pieces of Vietnamese Ming-inspired ceramics was hit by a catastrophic typhoon off the coast of Hoi An. Ravaged by fire and eroded by seawater, the ship’s cargo sunk to the bottom of the South China Sea. Forgotten about for centuries, in the early 1990s Vietnamese fisherman began to find ceramics in their shipping nets. So began the staggeringly expensive and dangerous diving excavation of the Cham Island Shipwreck, one of the deepest salvage expeditions ever undertaken. In the end, 250,000 pieces were recovered. Many were auctioned off to museums such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but a few of the miniature boxes, intended for cosmetics, medicines and spices, can still be found hidden in the warren of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Read Less