Museums
We can put museums all over the country, like the hotel in Sanya, into a "ground level theory". I divide them into three classes.
The first is the equivalent of Michelin's three-star presence, which means going to a separate city for it.
The second grade is equivalent to two Michelin stars. When you go to that city, you won't miss it.
Third grade is the equivalent of one Michelin star. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, go check it out.
The first grade: divine museums (equivalent to 3 Michelin stars)
The Palace Museum, the National Museum of China, the Shanghai Museum, the Taipei Palace Museum, the Hunan Provincial Museum, the Shaanxi History Museum, the Henan Museum, the Hubei Provincial Museum, and the Nanjing Museum.
They belong to the domestic must-see series.
Second grade: some excellent provincial and municipal museums (equivalent to 2 Michelin stars)
Provincial museums include: Zhejiang Museum, Guizhou Museum, Guangdong Museum, Yunnan Museum, Gansu Museum, and so on.
Municipal level includes Suzhou Museum, Ningbo Museum, Shenzhen Museum, Guilin Museum and so on.
Third grade: various museums with local characteristics (equivalent to 1 Michelin star)
For example, Hangzhou's Chinese Sword and Knife Museum, Chinese Fan Museum, and Chinese Umbrella Museum; Shanghai's Museum of Glass Art and Shanghai Glass Museum; Xiamen's Gulangyu Island Pipe Organ Museum; Beijing's Chinese Watermelon Museum; and Jiangsu's Chinese Sexual Culture Museum.
Maybe their collections aren't as extensive, but they're almost always the best in a particular field, and they're often interesting.
So what's the benefit of spending hours or even days visiting these museums?
It's a shortcut to a deeper understanding of the local culture.
Art galleries and museums in many cities are also one of the best ways to learn about the local area.
Nowadays, when we travel, we can only see the existing natural and human features of the place. The existence of museums can take you to see what the place used to be like and witness the way humans lived in different times. It is very interesting to know what the locals used to eat, what they used and where they lived.
Taking the Yunnan Provincial Museum as an example, you can see different periods of Yunnan from ancient times, Bronze Age, Eastern Han Dynasty to Wei, Jin, Tang and Song dynasties, which adds a lot of new knowledge to the journey.
Playing the museum is a very cost-effective city game.
Visiting museums in China is generally economical, and most of the best provincial museums are free.
Many museums require only a change of ID to gain free entry. It usually takes at least half a day to take a careful stroll around. Is it worth it?
It makes your trip more profound.
The majority of a trip these days is likely to consist of eating, sleeping, shopping, taking pictures, and being relaxed.
Of course, shopping is fun enough. The spiritual content would be more monumental if it delved into the history, culture, and customs.
If you can go abroad in the future, you can also use this travel logic in many destinations around the world.
Take Japan, for example. Even small prefectures in Kyushu have very good art galleries and museums, and from time to time the latest art exhibitions. For example, the Oita Prefectural Museum of Art has an international exhibition, and teamLab is housed in an abandoned onsen house in Kurenai.
However, art galleries are different from museums. Art museums are a subtype of museums.
Art is a reassuring presence, and one of my great desires in this life is to visit as many different art galleries and museums around the world as possible.
Today, we're going to talk about provincial museums in the country that are worth visiting. They are in popular destinations but at the same time overlooked by many. If you think this is a good topic, it will also form a series.
The list of provincial museums is as follows, or you can just go to the one you are interested in.
1. Guizhou Provincial Museum
2. Zhejiang Provincial Museum
3. Hunan Provincial Museum
4. Guangdong Provincial Museum
Guizhou Provincial Museum
The best place to hear the story of Guizhou
Although it was not featured in the first two seasons of National Treasures, I don't think it's at all a bad idea to visit it in person. It's not a loss.
The provincial museum is bigger than a large shopping center in the city. The outside is not designed at all like a traditional museum, but embraces a lot of modernity.
My favorite part of the whole museum was the multimedia installation that appeared at the beginning of the tour. The images of girls of different ethnicities would greet you in the local dialect and they would dance, instantly putting you into an ethnic context.
The museum has more than 8w exhibits, including a wide array of Miao costumes and silver jewelry. I guess girls or those interested in clothes will like it here.
At the clothing branch, I was really amazed by the beauty of all kinds of girls' clothes and jewelry! It's a famous sight for girls to sway and dance in the crowd on important days with gorgeous buns or stunning headdresses.
All the dresses in the museum's collection are gorgeous. In fact, the design records myths about things in nature and among humans, such as birds, animals, insects, fish, plants, flowers and fruits, as well as other myths such as the creation of the world and the shooting of the sun and moon.
Many of the clothes were sewn by grandma or mom herself for months and are full of deep love.
Silver jewelry is passed down from generation to generation, from grandmother to mother and from mother to daughter. They are very ornate and the details are worth the effort.
Girls use silver for headdresses, and boys? You can use small dried fish (this is artistic expression, of course)! If you're a shoveling officer, maybe you could make one for your host.
It is said that some international fashion brands, such as GUCCI, make special trips to Guizhou to find inspiration from the totem embroidery of local ethnic minorities.
Other exhibits are also really big names. The calligraphy and painting gallery includes original works by Zheng Banqiao, Qi Baishi and Feng Zikai.
Zheng Banqiao's bamboo paintings are also admirable. The bamboo leaves look messy, but they are not. They are densely packed and make the bamboo look solid.
I remember in my elementary school Chinese painting class, the teacher taught us to learn how to paint with Zheng Banqiao's bamboo, and at that time, no matter how much we imitated, we were clumsy.
I was very impressed with Qi Baishi, who was good at painting shrimps and crabs. Although his brushstrokes were rough, the crabs as a whole were very vivid. The crabs in the paintings are so playful and carefree that you can't bear to eat them.
The big brother of the museum security guards also know the exhibits. Want to find exhibits can be consulted.
In a short while, he took us through these famous paintings and calligraphy, all of which are treasures of the town. If we had gone shopping on our own, we might not have found them.
Guizhou is the cradle of ancient life on earth, so there are a lot of fossils here, which is why it is called the "Kingdom of Paleontology".
The museum has many fossils of land dinosaurs and sea creatures (Guizhou used to be an ocean).
There is a special fossil gallery upstairs, from huge dinosaurs to tiny sea creatures.
There are a bunch of international branded hotel branches near the museum, such as Hyatt, Hilton, and Renaissance. It's one of those places where you can take a walking tour of nearby hotels. There's also a Guanshan Lake Park next door. On a sunny day, you can see the lake sparkling. In the fall, it's also fun to go to the park and look for all kinds of yellow leaves.
Zhejiang Provincial Museum
Next up is the closer Zhejiang Museum. Divided into the Gushan Museum Area and the Wulin Museum Area, the Zhejiang Museum's basic displays are free to the public all year round.
The Wulin exhibition area is built in the West Lake Cultural Square, located in the downtown area, next to the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. In Hangzhou, the post is quite c.
Gushan exhibition area is located on the West Lake, is the "Gushan Temple North, Jiading West" Gushan. The whole building has the flavor of Jiangnan garden, personally I like it from the environment. And is close to the West Lake place, can avoid crowded.
In general, both museums have fixed exhibitions and mobile exhibitions.
Wulin Branch:
The Zhejiang Provincial Museum has a collection of 10 treasures, nine of which are in the Wulin Branch, such as the famous jade cong and the Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.
Besides the period when Hangzhou was the companion capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, there is also a glorious history of the area during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, when King Yue, the king of Wu, ruled over Zhejiang and Zhejiang Province (including all of Zhejiang, Southern Jiangsu, Shanghai and Northeastern Fujian).
So, many products in
Also known for the Hemudu culture in Yuyao, Ningbo, such as this ivory butterfly, but also listed as a national cultural relics of the highest level "prohibited from going abroad to exhibit cultural relics".
After strolling through the Wulin Branch, it is recommended that you can spend the price of a bus and take a bus boat to Wulin Gate Pier Xiaohe Street. The whole thing is very healing.
Listening to the bgm of Please Answer 1988 while riding the boat was so nice.
Gushan branch
What's interesting about the Lone Mountain Pavilion is that the different themed galleries here are spread across many beautiful buildings with stories to tell.
Gushan Park's centerpiece is this gold-plated, sterling silver Ashoka Pagoda, previously found in the Leifeng Pagoda's underground palace. It is made of pure silver and looks spectacular.
There is a Wenlan Hall, once one of the seven royal libraries of the Qing Dynasty, which housed the Siku Quanshu yuan. Currently, the theme on display here is "Wen Lan Yi Zi", where you can see the original Siku Quanshu.
Another theme worth seeing is "Images", which focuses on the artifacts of the Leifeng Pagoda and even the restoration of the excavation site of the Pagoda. Seeing this scene is like traveling back a thousand years.
The Leifeng Pagoda is a Buddhist pagoda, and the gold and bronze Buddha Sakyamuni Buddha underneath is also excavated from the underground palace of the Leifeng Pagoda. It is significant that the Buddha's light has been relaunched after a thousand years.
Visiting Buchol is more interesting when the leaves turn red and yellow. You won't be able to go to Japan for the leaf season this year. In fact, there are quite a few such secret places in the hills near West Lake in Hangzhou. When I look at the exhibits, I can also get a lot of healing from the natural and architectural landscape.
There are kittens in Partridge Hill Park. See if you can run into them sleeping or stretching.
Hunan Provincial Museum
There are really a lot of things to do in Changsha, besides drinking tea and making friends, such as seeing the Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha's most visited cultural landmark. Many people just call it "Xiang Bo". For outsiders, it's still confusing to say "provincial expo".
Ignorance of history is no excuse. Going here will only make history more interesting to white people. The exhibits inside are old, but the whole museum has a very hip feel to it.
Among all the exhibits, the most shining ones are the ancient tomb of Mawangdui and the thousand-year-old immortal Mrs. Xinchu. Many people walked away in shock after seeing them.
Of course, this is thanks to the wonderful explanations of the exhibits in the museum. What each item was, what it was used for and how it was used was explained very clearly with illustrations.
Mawangdui Western Han Tomb (Mawangdui)
This series of exhibits in the Wangdui Han Tomb is Xiang Bo's C. Without the discovery of Liu He's tomb after the Haihun Hou, the Mawangdui Han Tomb would have been absolutely the most exciting of all the Chinese Han Tomb archaeology.
Walking through the pavilion area is like stepping into a world where the owner of the Twilight Zone once lived. It's a little scary, but not at all over the top. The whole layout is very immersive.
For example, there are many Han figurines in the burials, playing different instruments, transporting one into a Western Han music scene that makes up a music festival.
For example, a piece of clothing is presented in a way that makes one marvel at how sophisticated the ancients were. After seeing this, and then looking at the fast-moving clothing in the mall, there really isn't a hint of enchantment.
What we have to say is "Western Han Dynasty T-line silk painting" and "flat yarn cicada clothes".
Western Han Dynasty T-line silk painting motifs are taken from "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", which shows heaven, earth and hell. Depicted in exquisite embroidery, the pattern looks quite stunning, once again marveling at the power of ancient craftsmanship.
Let's take a look at the Western Han Dynasty's Veiled Clothes.
It is incredibly thin. At just over 100 grams for such a large garment, it can be folded into a matchbox. The light down that Uniqlo can fit into a small bag is dwarfed by it.
It is impossible to achieve this kind of handcraftsmanship of the ancients with modern technology.
There are also some lacquer objects among the burial objects, such as plates for eating. On the bowl is written "You are lucky to eat," meaning that you should eat and drink well. The ancients lived by heart and were just as good as modern people.
In addition to the real artifacts, there are some new media technologies that make the exhibition look more vivid. As a special exhibition of cultural relics, Xiang Bo's curatorial level is top-notch in China.
And then there's Mrs. Xinchu.
When the remains of Lady Xinchu were unearthed in 1972, the news caused a worldwide sensation. After more than 2,000 years, it still had its body intact, its muscles flexible, its joints moving and its hair still on. It was the first perfect wet body found in the world.
Lady Xin Zhui's face has been restored by experts and looks like this. She was a great beauty.
The T-shaped silk painting mentioned above is a classic among her burial goods.
At Xiang Bo, you can see the immortalized face of Madam Xin Zhui for thousands of years. Don't be afraid, there are many people around anyway. The narrator on the side will also give a lecture on the life of Madam Xin Zhui, which shows that she had good taste during her life.
Recently, there was a special exhibition on the first floor called "Ancient Civilizations of Peru", which is worth seeing.
Though there are only three floors, the area is really big. If you go very deep, you may not be able to walk, but there are a lot of chairs in the museum for you to rest.
It is recommended to look down from the 3rd floor for a better understanding. Everything is free except for the special exhibits which are charged.
First Floor: Special Exhibition and Lady Xinchu
2nd Floor: History of Hunan
3rd Floor: Mawangdui Han Tomb
The Hunan Provincial Museum is booked. 15,000 people can be enrolled each day, with 9,000 places allocated online. Reservations can be made three days in advance. It is not a big problem to go on weekdays. If there is a holiday, please make a reservation in advance.
How to make a reservation?
1. Follow "Hunan Provincial Museum" WeChat WeChat official account
2. Click on the bottom of the "Visitor Services" and select "Ticket Reservation"
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3. Fill in your personal or friend's information.
It's important to have an explanation for such a big museum.
1. Manual interpretation: There is free interpretation on the second and third floors at 10 o'clock every day. Most of the lecturers are retired employees of the venue. In their mouths, these thousands of years of cultural relics seem to become more vivid. Highly recommended!
2. Electronic explanation: scan the QR code next to the booth for explanation. Relatively less vivid, but the advantage is that the exhibition can be at your own pace.
3. Apply for an interpreter at the front desk.
Guangdong Provincial Museum
Guangdong Provincial Museum is located in Zhujiang New City. The land is precious and it is a bit rare to leave a large open space for humanities and arts.
Besides, it's really easy to visit around. The Canton Tower is across the river from it, and Guangzhou's white-collar workplaces include the Guangzhou Library, the Grand Theater, and the CBD.
And it has a superb architectural appearance, like a treasure chest hidden between tall buildings, and features a lot of hollowed-out designs to give the whole thing a more artistic look.
The Guangdong Provincial Museum is divided into four sections: the Art Museum, the Nature Museum, the History Museum and the Temporary Exhibition Hall. Except for the temporary exhibition hall, the other three museums mainly present some local stories from ancient times to the present.
What is the essence of the permanent exhibition?
The Chaozhou Woodcarving Art Exhibition
There are two major woodcarving systems in China, one in Dongyang, Zhejiang Province, and the other in Chaozhou.
The Chaozhou here does not refer to today's Chaozhou, but to the ancient Chaozhou Prefecture, which included the entire three cities of Chaoshan.
The delicacy of wood carving in Chaozhou is really beyond my imagination. Craftsmen can depict stories, battles, celebrations in wood that looks lifelike.
The most missing thing in Teochew is the various shrines, which have wood carving elements everywhere, from the architecture to the interior decoration. In a shrine, the shrine is indispensable. Simply put, it is a wooden chair used to offer sacrifices to the gods.
Shrines can be carved in a normal way or very artistically. Generally, shrines with carved designs are plastered with pure gold leaf for an opulent look.
There is a treasure of the museum, called "gold lacquer wood carving shrine", the national treasure visited, is the largest known shrine.
There are many rich scenes on it, some traditional patterns, plants and fruits, as well as vivid scenes of major gatherings of the ancients. It is a condensed map of the world and is very impressive.
Duan Inkstone Art Exhibition
Duan inkstone is one of the four famous inkstones. And it's pretty amazing. The ink ground from it won't freeze even when it's cold in winter; insects and ants won't eat the words written with this ink.
The inkstone here is a treasure in the museum. It's obviously stone, but the texture is soft. Curious. What is the craftsmanship behind it? It's just as well that this exhibit can be the narrator of the story.
The jewel of the museum here is the Golden Monkey Chronicle
It was built in the Guangxu period. At that time, Ho, an adviser to Zhang Zhidong, the governor of the two Cantons, enlisted famous local craftsmen to make the Duan inkstone and used the precious Daxi Cave stone from the Old Pit as the raw material.
At first glance, the monkey pattern is not obvious. When you wipe the inkstone with a damp cloth, the golden monkey appears on the paper. Where I drew the yellow line is the monkey face. Can you see it?
You can see the natural stripes of precious fish brain jelly, rouge, and fire handcuffs on it, and it looks like a monkey surrounded by peach trees. The monkey's eyes, nose and mouth look lifelike.
There is also an exhibition collection of ceramics through the ages and an exhibition of natural resources of Guangdong Province. Without going into too much detail today, it's all quite a stroll. The latter, in particular, is quite photogenic.
The permanent exhibition is free of charge, with ID card can get tickets to visit. Real-name registration reservation, each person can reserve no more than 3 free tickets (children under 1.4m free). Reservations can be made for 1,500 tickets per day, while supplies last.
There's a recent special exhibition honoring anti-epidemic workers that comes highly recommended. After all, it may be the biggest event in the country this year. It's not "Together" these days. When you take this exhibit with you, you get a better sense of how hard health care workers work.
By the way, a set of peripherals with Lychee culture was recently on display, including earrings, notebooks, rulers, umbrellas and more. It's pretty exciting.
An awesome variety show about museums
National Treasure
National Treasure was mentioned earlier when talking about a few artifacts.
I recommend checking it out. Each episode of the show takes you on a tour of a powerful museum, with celebrities showing you in depth the treasures of different small town museums. For example, Ryan, Li Chen, Wang Kai, and Liu Tao all came as guests and went to the cos to tell stories themselves, which was fun and learning about culture.
You can do some homework ahead of time with this program, as well as make all the provincial blogs a must-see list for your trip. When you visit a museum, you can learn about treasures from a previous life without reading the narration. It's so cool.
The first season focuses on nine museums:
Nanjing Museum, Hunan Museum, Shanghai Museum, Zhejiang Museum, Palace Museum, Henan Museum, Shaanxi History Museum, Liaoning Museum, and Hubei Museum.
Several new museums have been added in the second season: the Hebei Museum, the Shanxi Museum, the Shandong Museum, the Guangdong Museum, the Sichuan Museum, the Yunnan Museum, the Gansu Museum, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum.
All are great restaurants to add to your travel list.
In addition to exchanging tickets on site, all of the above mentioned museums can be booked in advance directly on their official WeChat Weixin official account. It is recommended that you book in advance, as there may be a queue on site.