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An exhibition of ancient Chinese artifacts will go forward at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, after all. The exhibition, ''Secrets of the Silk Road,'' which includes materials, including two mummies, recently excavated at desert burial sites in western China, was organized by the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., and was shown there last year and subsequently at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where it closed on Jan. 2. It was scheduled to open at the Penn Museum on February 5, but last week, three days before the planned opening, the museum announced that China had requested that none of the artifacts be displayed. As a result, the museum would only show photographs, multimedia presentations, and a recreation of an excavation site; it offered refunds to those who had bought advance tickets and said that the exhibition would now be free. The problem now seems to have been crossed signals between the museum and the Chinese government, in which the museum was approved as a venue by regional officials but not, as required, by the central authorities in Beijing. The Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday quoted a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, Wang Baodong, saying that the central government had only approved the show going to Santa Ana and Houston. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]