Museums, Xi'an

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The Shaanxi Provincial History Museum, for all the US$174 million investment, is a real disappointment almost entirely because no-one ever gave a moment's thought to educating or even entertaining visitors. It provides virtually no information to the Chinese visitor, let alone the foreign one, and the opportunities for developing viable commercial opportunities is missed entirely. Capping it all are unhelpful, bored, ignorant staff at every turn who have no desire to help, educate or play any part in the visitor experience other than drink tea.

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In the absence of useful official guidance, the following may be helpful:
Early Zhou oracle bones, from the bone of an ox. By drilling holes in the bone, and in tortoise shells, then setting fire to string tied through the hole, the diviners would interpret the resulting cracks in the bone. They would decide whether it was good or bad to do certain things. The results were then inscribed in the bone or tortoise shell, so becoming some of the earliest examples of writing in the world.
Zhou bronzes: plenty of them, but few spectacular examples, although several have beautiful inscriptions.
Zhou shell currency
Early Qin coins
Samples from the Terracotta Warriors from Qin Shihuang's mausoleum
Han ceramic drainage pipes, showing the level of advancement of early Chang'an
Han 'caltrap' anti-cavalry weapons - ingenious but nasty four-spiked objects that would always have one spike facing upwards, so extremely effective against horses.
Northern Wei armour - among the earliest in China
Tang tri-colour (brown, yellow and green) pottery used in tombs: this type of pottery is incredibly rare.
Tang bronze mirrors, which were particularly favoured by Emperor Xuanzong, who gave them as gifts to his officials on his birthday.
The Hejia treasures, of gold and silver bowls and plates, discovered as part of a huge treasure trove in the village of Hejia in 1970
The Famensi treasures discovered at the Famen temple, near Baoji: gold and silver utensils, plates and bowls.
Song bronze chess pieces
A Song brick, engraved with a local folk dance, still performed today in the north of the province
Song figurines of Sumo wrestlers, which originated in China, but is no longer practiced here.
Yuan magic plate, which has numerals engraved on it. The sum of any of the six numbers read vertically, horizontally or diagonally comes to 111. Plates such as these were placed under palaces to protect them from evil spirits.
Ming census books
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The Shaanxi History Museum is a spectacular building with an excellent collection. It's a pity that the authorities didn't find some money in the US$174 million investment to produce decent guidebooks to help guide tourists through the museum: there are some guidebooks - they aren't much good - but you have to hunt them down. The museum itself was very much the vision of the late Zhou Enlai apparently, but misses its potential. While it has a superb collection, the poor labelling and preponderance of cheap souvenir stands scattered around the building shows that the structure may be new, but no-one has learnt from the excellent museums in Shanghai and Nanjing how to meet the needs of visitors.
The building uses Tang Dynasty design features and architectural details, and inside there are 113,000 historical artefacts - few of them on display. Sadly, the opportunity is missed to provide a genuinely educational display of the history of Shaanxi, instead using poorly lit glass cabinets crammed with poorly labelled objects and no context.
The first room of the museum starts with the Prehistory of the area, and some models of the Lantian man finds, but after the good start, it all tumbles downhill into a lengthy succession of "Jar, Tang Dynasty", "Bowl, Tang Dynasty", which rapidly becomes tedious. If you can find the "Handbook for Xi'an" (ISBN 7541813311) there is eighteen pages of rather bizarre museum monologue; 'bizarre' because it describes the historical setting for each room, like a small history of China, but without mentioning many of the artefacts. As an example, for part of the section on the Song Dynasty, the book states "On display here are pots, jars, trays of ten utensils, boxes, and bowls, and so on".

The Xi'An museum is absolutely amazing.

It tells the story of the area since stone age to the japanese invasion in the thirties las century. I have not many pics of this museum, just this one of a large lion guarding the main hall. Go to visit it if you have time

It's a large-scale modern State-class museum, situated at the western side of the "Wild Goose Pagoda" in Xian City. It covers an area of about 70,000 square meters, the architectural area of which is 55,000 odd square meters. It was completed on June 20, 1991 and open to the public.

There are over 3000 pieces of cultural relics on display; they are the cream of cultural relics selected from among the hundreds of thousands of cultural relics, the majority of which are worldly treasures. Not only for me this museum is one of the best in China.

The Forest of Stele, which is located on the site of the ancestral temple of the Tang Dynasty. The Forest of Stele was first founded in 1090 A.D. during the Song Dynasty. It is the oldest and richest collection of steles in China. The stele are numerous enough to be likened to a forest, hence the name. This museum consists of six large exhibition halls, seven corridors and a stele pavilion. There are more than 1,000 stele of eight dynasties from the Han down to the Qing. They are of great value to historians and for the study of calligraphic development.

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A modern museum completed in May 2007. It shows Xian as the capital of the various dynasties.

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This museum holds a large collection of tablets of different periods from Han to Qing dynasty.Maybe it is the world's heaviest library. You may buy a copy of the tablet for a fee.