Huaxi Insect Museum

Huaxi Insect Museum

Situated at the foot of Qingcheng Mountain in Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, the Huaxi Insect Museum has been designated as a National Third-Class Museum by the National Cultural Heritage Administration. It is China’s first modernized insect museum, with the largest number of exhibited specimens in Asia. The museum collection includes all butterfly species found in Sichuan Province, as well as rare and ornamental insect specimens, plus a substantial number of butterfly and insect specimens from various regions across China. Among these, the butterfly collection alone features over 1,700 species native to China, accounting for more than 95% of all known species in the country. It is internationally recognized by the academic community as the most comprehensive museum of Chinese butterfly species in the world, with a butterfly collection three times larger than the total number of butterfly species in Europe. The museum has been hailed by numerous foreign media outlets, including The New York Times, as the “largest insect museum in Asia.” It houses over 400,000 rare and unique insect specimens from more than 40 countries across six continents, many of which are found nowhere else in China.

Compared to similar museums worldwide, this museum is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities that meet international standards. From its exhibit content to its exhibition halls, it rivals the insect museums of developed countries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan. In addition to a multitude of world-renowned specimens, the museum also boasts a large multimedia computer display system, an insect film screening hall, a butterfly tree and butterfly column made from thousands of renowned ornamental butterfly species, and highly realistic giant insect models scaled precisely to life size—all offering striking visual impact. Many exhibits are either unique in the world or on par with those in top-tier insect museums globally. For example, the multimedia computer display system is available in Chinese, English, and Japanese, with nearly one million words of content and over 5,000 types of insect photographs, making it the most comprehensive of its kind among insect museums worldwide. The ultra-realistic insect models, magnified 30 times to a size of 1–3 meters while retaining every minute detail just like real insects, are designed and produced entirely according to the standards of world-class museum exhibits—matching the craftsmanship of insect models displayed in internationally renowned museums such as the Oxford University Museum, the Vienna Natural History Museum, and the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, all of which are part of the world’s top ten natural history museums.

Address: At the foot of Qingcheng Mountain, Dujiangyan City, Chengdu

Type: Museum

Recommended visiting time: About 1 hour

Phone: 028-87288991

Official website: http://asia-insect.com/

Opening hours:

Closed on Mondays; open Tuesday–Sunday: 9:00–12:00; 13:30–17:00

Ticket information:

Free admission. Visitors need to exchange their ticket with a valid ID.

Further reading:

· China National Second-Class Museum