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Hunping(funerary urn orspirit bottle) isa specific term used to describe unusual vessels decorated with animals and people that were made duringthe Three Kingdoms and Jin period (220-420). It is a vessel type whose provenance is generally limited to the area south of the Yangtze River corresponding to modern northern Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

Hunpingreflects the southern tradition of "burial of the summoned soul". Placed in a tomb together with armrests, banqueting tables, food, and drink, it was hoped that the soul of the deceased would return to reside in the urn.Hunpingis usually decorated with auspicious beasts, birds and Buddha, which represent mystical entities that could guide the soul to be reborn in paradise.

The blue-glazed funerary urn, unearthed in 1939 in Shaoxing County of East China's Zhejiang Province, was made in the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280) and is one of the representative works. The urn is 46 cm in height with a caliber of 11 cm. The funerary urn comprises of two sections conglutinated together and the whole body was applied with pure blue glaze. The upper section has statues of a three-story building and images of various animals. In the lower section, images of a hunter, dogs, deer, pigs, fish, tortoises and so on were dispersedly adhered to the urn body, forming a big contrast with the dense statues on the upper section. The urn is now kept in the Beijing Palace Museum.

The funerary urn with ingenious design and fine making reflects the great achievement of porcelain making skills in the Three Kingdoms Period. Though in a big variety, the subject matters on the urn do not make people feel trivial. Various modeling patterns imply ingenuity in the clumsy postures and the design of the urn combines the heavenly and the earthly worlds, mythologies and reality. As a burial article, it embodies the hope of the urn host and his/her family to be wealthy and prosperous forever and also reproduces the scenes of manors and watery regions in southern China. Therefore, the urn is of high historical and artistic value.