Luanping County Museum

Luanping County Museum

Luanping County Museum is located on East Street in Luanping County, Hebei Province. The museum was approved for establishment by the provincial cultural relics bureau in 1983 and is under the administration of the Luanping County Culture Bureau. Covering an area of over 500 square meters across two floors, the museum has a total construction area of more than 1,000 square meters. It houses a collection of over 8,435 cultural relics, including 11 national first-class relics, 38 second-class relics, and 337 third-class relics. More than 400 immovable cultural relics have been discovered in Luanping, with the museum’s collection totaling tens of thousands of items. Among them, the Neolithic stone-carved goddess statue is a significant archaeological find in China and is considered the most complete and typical prehistoric Venus figure discovered to date in the country. The jade cong is a new discovery from the Neolithic period in the region north of the Yanshan Mountains and is the only known specimen of its kind in China. The gourd-shaped seeding tool from the Jin Dynasty fills a gap in China’s agricultural archaeology.

Luanping was densely populated by the Shanrong people for nearly a thousand years. The Shanrong culture is the longest-lasting, oldest, and most distinctive ancient cultural relic in northern China. The totem culture of the Shanrong is also a highly important discovery. Frog-shaped plaques and frog-shaped stone figures reflect the existence and development of Shanrong totem worship. In particular, the frog-faced stone figure is the first discovery of its kind in the archaeological history of Chinese totem art. Although the *Classic of Mountains and Seas* records many semi-human, semi-divine totem worship idols, no physical artifacts from the same period had ever been found until the discovery of the frog-faced stone figure, which fills this gap and provides important evidence for the study of the existence and development of totem-based ethnic groups in China.

Since its establishment, Luanping Museum has hosted numerous exhibitions, such as: *Exhibition of Cultural Relics Unearthed in Luanping*, *Photo Exhibition of the Great Wall Cultural Relics*, *Photography and Calligraphy Exhibition of the Chengde Region*, *Exhibition of Luanping’s Reform and Opening-Up Achievements*, *Exhibition of Historical Cultural Relics of Luanping*, *Exhibition of Manchu Cultural History in Luanping*, *Secret History Cultural Relics Exhibition of Qing Emperors’ Mulan Autumn Hunting*, *Exhibition of Precious Cultural Relics from Qing Emperors’ Northern Inspection Tour Palaces Along the Imperial Road*, *Building the Great Wall with Iron and Blood – A Photographic Documentary Exhibition of the Hebei People’s Resistance Against Japan*; in 2004, it co-hosted *Major Archaeological Discoveries in China · Luanping’s Discovery of Ancient Stone-Carved Goddess Statue and Shanrong Human Body Ornaments* with the Mountain Resort Museum, and in 2005, it renovated its permanent exhibition and held *The Splendid Ancient Civilization of Luanping – Colorful Historical Relics; Mysterious Shanrong Culture*.

The museum’s permanent exhibitions are divided into seven sections: 1. Stone Age; 2. Xia, Shang – Western Zhou; 3. Spring and Autumn – Warring States; 4. Western Han – Sui and Tang; 5. Song, Liao, Jin; 6. Yuan, Ming, Qing; 7. The Great Wall Thematic Exhibition.

Further Reading:

· National Third-Class Museum of China