Hepu Han Tombs Museum

Hepu Han Tombs Museum

The Hepu Han Tombs Museum is a cultural tourism attraction.

Hepu Han Tombs Museum

The Hepu County Museum is located in Zhongshan Park on Zhongshan Road, Lianzhou Town, Hepu County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The exhibits of the Hepu County Museum mainly consist of the "Exhibition of Cultural Relics Unearthed from Han Dynasty Tombs in Hepu." The exhibition hall is divided into four rooms by wooden display panels, covering an exhibition area of 238 square meters with 250 artifacts on display, primarily including bronze ware, pottery, as well as glassware, amber, agate, crystal, and gold, silver, jade, and stone items. Among them, the bronze phoenix lamp, bronze house, bronze kettle with a lifting handle, three-legged bronze plate, and bronze gui vessel showcase the delicate and refined characteristics of southern bronze ware. The pottery building featuring the stilt-house structure reflects the local climate and daily living conditions. Among the exhibits is an early Eastern Han Dynasty bronze kettle with a lifting handle, which still contains preserved liquid inside.

The museum houses a collection of 3,150 cultural relics, primarily consisting of artifacts unearthed from Han tombs, as well as Qing Dynasty calligraphy, paintings, and fan paintings. Among these, intact glass cups, glass plates, bronze houses, bronze wells, bronze stoves, gold belt hooks, jade bi discs, and handed-down iron dous and bronze bells unearthed from Han tombs are particularly precious. The museum has published works such as "Introduction to Hepu Cultural Relics," "Historical Sites of Hepu," and "Explanations of Cultural Relics Unearthed from Han Tombs in Hepu."

The Hepu Ancient Tombs Cluster is located in the eastern suburbs of Hepu County, Beihai City. It stretches from Jinshan Village in Huancheng Township in the south to Qingjiang Village in the north, spanning approximately 5 kilometers from east to west and about 13 kilometers from north to south, covering an area of 68 square kilometers.

To date, more than 1,200 ancient tombs within the Hepu Ancient Tombs Cluster have been excavated, yielding over 10,000 precious cultural relics. These include bronze ware, jade artifacts, gold and silver items, ceramics, ancient coins, as well as imported goods such as spices, glassware, green glass, crystal, and other ornaments and handicrafts, along with gold ornaments in foreign styles. It is one of the most renowned large-scale Han tomb clusters both in China and abroad. In 1996, the Hepu Ancient Tombs Cluster was designated as a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Based on the unearthed artifacts, the tombs in this cluster are predominantly from the Han Dynasty, though there are also a small number from the Han, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties, Song, Ming, and Qing periods. In 1972, 245 artifacts were unearthed here, five of which — including the bronze phoenix lamp, bronze house, bronze plaque, and three-legged plate — were exhibited in seven countries, including Japan and Canada. Subsequently, five more tombs were excavated in areas such as Tangpai Village, yielding over 360 artifacts, including pottery, bronze ware, glassware, crystal, as well as a large number of wuzhu coins and glass beads, and also belt hooks commonly used by northern ethnic groups. Research indicates that this type of belt hook was introduced to the Central Plains during the Spring and Autumn Period. This demonstrates that Hepu had close ties with the Central Plains region over two thousand years ago.

The cultural relics unearthed from the ancient tombs provide extremely valuable physical materials for studying ancient China’s politics, economy, military, culture, art, north-south exchanges, as well as friendly interactions with Southeast Asian countries.

Open from Tuesday to Sunday.

Daily opening hours: 8:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Afternoon: 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM (15:00 PM – 5:30 PM from June to September).