Archive for the ‘Nanjing Museum’ Category
Traveling in Nantong, Nantong Museum is a must-see due to its status in China’s museum system. Nantong museum is located at the riverside of Haohe River. Nantong Museum was fabricated by Zhang Jian(1853——1926)，Chinese modern industrialist, educationist, and the first place winner of Imperial Exam in late Qing dynasty, and he claimed the slogan of Saving China via Industry. He created more than 20 factories and more than 370 schools. He did great contributions to China’s development of modern national industry and education. He was crowned to be the industrialist titled Number One Scholar).Nantong museum is the earliest one in China and the cultural site under the state-level protection. The original museum had three main architectures that respectively were mid hall, south hall and north hall used for natural display, historical display, art display and educational display. This museum is the organic combination of the ancient garden-style architectures and the modern museum. Since 1950s, more exhibition halls are added such as the bonsai exhibition, riverside tea house, river-center pavilion and so on. Currently Nantong museum is not only the local comprehensive museum but also the unique cultural park. Concerning the collections, there are many Neolithic relics and many unique pieces showing the origin of Eight Diagrams.
Nantong Museum is Chinese earliest museum
By the end of 1989, Nantong Museum had collected 40,115 items, of which 6,126 are natural samples and 55 are Class One relics. The collections feature the local characteristics such as the stone artifacts, pottery, jade objects and bone objects unearthed at the former site of the Neolithic Age,the tools for making salt by boiling seawater from the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), and the celadon pot in the shape of leather bag (a copy of the leather bag used by the nomadic tribes for holding water) from the late Tang Dynasty (827-907) unearthed in 1973 in Nantong City. The porcelain mortar with the inscription of Chen Ruoxu, used for pounding medicine, belonged to the renowned medical doctor Chen Ruoxu of Nantong during 1573-1620 in the Ming Dynasty. Among the artworks of painting, calligraphy and embroidery are the paintings of Li Fangying, a native of Nantong and one of the well-known Yangzhou Eight Schools, and the embroideries of Shen Shou, a famous modern embroidery handicraftsman. Among the revolutionary relics are documents, manuscript, weapons and the things left behind by the martyrs during the Anti-Japanese War. The Museum covers an area of 450 square meters divided into three basic exhibitions: the historical relics, the revolutionary relics and natural samples.
Currently, Nantong Musuem is one of most famous and important museums themed with its uniqueness and local relics of history and culture.
Nanjing museum is one of most famous local comprehensive museums in China. Thanks to the glorious history and great culture of Nanjing, Nanjing museum is largely famous for its cultural and historic relics. Nanjing Museum is ranked in Four Top Museums of China, and leveled with Shanghai History, Beijing Palace Museum and Xian History Museum. Coming to Nanjing, Nanjing Museum is the must-see. Just inside Zhongshan Gate, the Nanjing Museum covers an area of over 83,000 square meters. The main building, constructed in April 1933 following the architectural style of the Liao Dynasty (916-1125), is an ancient temple with yellow-glazed tiles, red-lacquered gates and columns. The Museum was moved to Yunnan and Sichuan provinces after the breakout of the Anti-Japanese War and back to Nanjing in 1946. After the foundation of the New China or People’s Republic of China, the Museum was finally given the official name of the Nanjing Museum in August 1950.
Nanjing Museum is one of Chinese most famous museums for their culture and history collections
More than 415,000 cultural relics, among which 718 pieces are of the first grade, are housed in the Nanjing Museum, arranged by date from the Neolithic Age to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, including excavations, historical relics, revolutionary relics, folk relics, paintings, crafts, stone inscriptions, documents and foreign relics. Some of the collections are from other museums and research institutions, some are from the temporary imperial palaces in Rehe and Fengtian, some are purchased from or donated by foreign friends, and others are relics excavated mostly after the liberation.
The relics include about 2,000 rare and valuable ones. Among them, Paleolithic stone wares and colored potteries, sacred bronze wares engraved with the names of four Wu State kings of the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC), imperial utensils of the Warring States Period (475-221BC) engraved with 96 dragons, gold beast of 17.8cm long and 10.2cm tall, jade dress sewn with silver thread and other articles are all treasures.
Calligraphy and painting works from ancient dynasties collected by the Museum exceed 30,000, including those valuable from the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. There are also 2,233 folk relics representing 11 ethnic groups. In addition, the Museum contains large quantities of inscriptions of the Ming and Qing dynasties as well as precious historical documents of modern times.
The pride of the collection is the life-size Han Dynasty (206BC-221AD) jade burial suit. Unearthed in the city of Xuzhou in northern Jiangsu Province in 1970, the suit is made up of 2,600 jade pieces held together by silver wire, weighs 400 kilograms, and stretches 1.70 meters long. There is also a large wooden copy of a statue of a man with all the acupuncture points marked on his body, the original bronze version of which dates back to the Warring States Period.
The Museum consists of nine halls, seven of which have space especially for Jiangsu Historical Relics Display, exhibiting the development of Jiangsu Province from the primitive society to the modern times. The exhibition halls occupy 3,712 square meters. The other two halls hold over ten important exhibitions of painting, crafts and relics annually. The Museum constantly organizes roadshows at home and abroad, and helps popularize historical, cultural and artistic knowledge by arranging lectures in high schools, factories or via broadcasting stations, TV and newspapers.