Former Site of Beijiang Museum

Former Site of Beijiang Museum

The former site of Beijiang Museum is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Beijiang Museum (French name: Musee HongHo PaiHo – Yellow River and White River Museum), the predecessor of Tianjin Natural History Museum, was established by French Catholic Jesuit priest and naturalist Paul Émile Licent (1876–1952) when he came to China in 1914. It was hailed as one of the world’s “foremost museums” during the 1920s and 1930s. The museum complex consists of three parts: the North Building, the Exhibition Hall, and the South Building. The South and North Buildings are connected by a corridor, together forming a distinctive “H”-shaped layout. The Beijiang Museum houses a collection of over 200,000 specimens and artifacts, including animals, plants, paleontology, paleoanthropology, rocks and minerals, as well as historical and folk cultural relics. This collection laid the foundation for the holdings of the Tianjin Natural History Museum and brought it international renown in the 1930s. Its published works and journals have been included in the global treasury of natural science literature, earning high prestige worldwide. In 1991, the former site of Beijiang Museum was designated as a “Tianjin Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit” by the Tianjin Municipal People’s Government.

On October 7, 2019, the former site of Beijiang Museum was included in the eighth batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units.

Further Reading:

· Eighth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units