Wanzhou District Museum

Wanzhou District Museum

The predecessor of the Wanzhou District Museum was the Museum of Wanxian Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Located in the central area of Wanzhou District, the museum site borders the Yangtze River and is adjacent to Xishan Park. With its elegant environment and convenient transportation, it is a local comprehensive museum dedicated to collecting, researching, and exhibiting historical relics and folk customs of the Three Gorges region. Since its opening in 1988, the museum has focused on the Three Gorges area and has successively hosted exhibitions such as the "Exhibition of Cultural Relics from Wanxian Prefecture" and the "Exhibition of Folk Arts and Crafts from Liangping." Currently, the museum's permanent exhibitions include "Ancient Tombs of Eastern Sichuan," "Flowing Time: Memories of Wanzhou," and "The Ancient Elephant of Yanjing." These exhibitions feature strong local characteristics and comprehensively reflect the political, economic, and cultural aspects of the ancient Three Gorges region, attracting a large number of domestic and international visitors. The Wanzhou District Museum has become an important window for tourists from around the world to learn about the human history of the Three Gorges region.

The Wanzhou District Museum currently houses a collection of over 40,000 cultural relics (sets). The types of collections include paleontological fossils, pottery, porcelain, bronze ware, stone tools, gold and silverware, among others. The time span of the collections ranges from the middle to late Neolithic Age to the Ming and Qing Dynasties—early 20th century, with the richest collections from the Warring States, Han-Tang, and Ming-Qing periods. Among the museum’s most valuable relics are bronze chime bells, cymbals, and willow-leaf-shaped short swords with strong Ba culture characteristics; vividly shaped Han Dynasty pottery figurines; and exquisitely crafted celadon figurines unearthed from the early Tang Dynasty’s "Fuma Tomb."

Given Wanzhou’s location on the golden tourism route of the Three Gorges and at the heart of the Chongqing reservoir area affected by the Three Gorges Project, the Wanzhou District Museum has leveraged its collection advantages to present permanent exhibitions such as "Ancient Tombs of Eastern Sichuan," the precious archival photo exhibition "Flowing Time – Memories of Wanzhou," and "The Ancient Elephant of Yanjing Valley." The total exhibition area covers 2,465 square meters, displaying 538 physical artifacts, along with 34 replicas and models.

With the construction of the Three Gorges Project, a large number of surface and underground cultural relics below the waterline urgently require protection and rescue. According to the "Cultural Relics Protection Plan for the Submerged and Relocated Areas of the Three Gorges Project," there are 110 underground cultural relic sites and 24 surface cultural relic sites within the Wanzhou area that lie below the reservoir waterline. To rescue and protect these relics, the Wanzhou District Museum has established a collaboration department specifically responsible for coordinating with archaeological teams from across the country. Additionally, the museum has formed its own archaeological team, which since 1999 has undertaken excavation tasks at over ten underground relic sites including Suheping, Xiazhong Village, and Daqiuping in Wanzhou, covering more than 40,000 square meters. Over ten thousand cultural relics have been salvaged, among which the excavation of the Daqiuping Tomb Cluster in Wanzhou in 2003 was named one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in the Chongqing reservoir area that year. Professionals have also written numerous archaeological excavation reports and research articles. Moreover, the museum is responsible for the relocation and reconstruction of seven surface cultural relic sites below the waterline in the district (out of the 24 surface cultural relic sites below the waterline, seven are to be relocated and reconstructed, while the rest are to be preserved in situ or documented). By April 2008, structures such as the Huilan Pagoda and the Liu Family Memorial Archway had been reconstructed and unveiled to the public in their renewed forms, while the reconstruction of structures like the Lu’an Bridge is currently underway.

Further Reading:

· National Second-Class Museum of China