Boxing County Museum

Boxing County Museum

The Boxing County Museum is a national AA-level tourist attraction.

The Boxing County Museum is located on Boxing Fifth Road, with the Cultural Square in front and Dongyong Park behind, situated in the cultural and entertainment center of the city. The museum was built and put into use in 2001, with an investment of nearly 3 million yuan, a construction area of 2,300 square meters, and divided into two floors. Inside the main entrance is a hall spanning over 200 square meters, which houses the exhibition area comprising seven exhibition rooms: two Buddhist art rooms, two stone carving art rooms, one historical display room, one revolutionary relics room, and one Lü Opera art room. Over 400 cultural relics are on display.

The museum houses a collection of more than 3,000 cultural relics, including pottery, porcelain, Buddhist artifacts, stone carvings, stone tools, metalware, jade, the Four Treasures of the Study (writing brushes, ink sticks, inkstones, and paper), seals, ancient books and paintings, coins, bone and horn implements, fossils, folk items, and more. Among them, the most renowned are the Buddhist artworks from the Northern Dynasties to the Sui Dynasty. Boxing has yielded a large number of Northern Dynasties Buddhist relics made of various materials such as stone, bronze, unglazed porcelain, and pottery. There are about 200 stone statues, most of which bear inscriptions—an exceptional feature not found elsewhere. The museum exhibits mold-printed unglazed porcelain Buddha statues, which are unique artistic treasures characteristic of the region and have not been discovered in other areas according to current domestic records. Especially noteworthy are a group of gold and bronze Buddha statues unearthed in 1982 from Longhua Temple, dating from the second year of the Taihe era of the Northern Wei Dynasty to the third year of the Renshou era of the Sui Dynasty, spanning four dynasties over a period of 125 years—an extremely rare find in China, hailed by experts both at home and abroad as a remarkable achievement in the archaeology of Buddhism during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The museum also houses the Longhua Stele, carved during the Sui Dynasty. The stele’s calligraphy represents a transitional style from clerical script to regular script in Chinese calligraphy history, and its research value and carving craftsmanship hold an important place in China, making it the museum’s prized treasure.

The museum’s collection is rich and diverse, including a large number of pottery pieces, the Four Treasures of the Study, porcelain, bone, horn, and shell artifacts, ancient paintings and calligraphy, ancient books, as well as jade artifacts. The most distinctive feature of the Boxing County Museum is its Northern Dynasties Buddhist statues. Over the past decade, Boxing County has unearthed a significant number of stone and porcelain Buddha statues, as well as those made of gold and bronze. In addition, the museum holds over a hundred stone Buddha statues, many of which are inscribed—an attribute that sets them apart from similar collections elsewhere. Moreover, the museum’s collection of mold-printed unglazed porcelain Buddha statues is a unique artistic treasure not found anywhere else in the world, leaving experts, scholars, and visitors from both China and abroad in awe.

Further Reading:

· National Second-Class Museum of China