The First Building of Land Reclamation (Museum)

The First Building of Land Reclamation (Museum)

Introduction In July 24, 1950, General - and others, including Tao Zhizhi, rode to the banks of the Manas River to survey the terrain. He proposed that the office location of the 22nd Corps should be prioritized in the city center. Thus, what is now the First Building of Land Reclamation in Shihezi became the first construction project of the city.

At the time, there were no labor tools available, so they asked several local Uyghur residents from the old streets of Shihezi to forge some; they built kilns themselves and fired bricks using traditional methods; logs were fitted with spikes and tied with ropes, then pulled by groups of two or three people from the mountains dozens of kilometers away to Shihezi; engineers were dispatched by the Xinjiang Military Region to form a construction department; skilled workers were brought in from Hunan, Shanghai, and Dihua (now Urumqi), and training classes were held to teach construction techniques. After thorough preparation, construction of the first building in Shihezi began in May 1952 and was completed in September of the same year. A two-story office building (with a four-story central main structure) covering an area of more than 5,600 square meters stood tall on the ancient wilderness.

At the end of 1994, the Shihezi Cultural Bureau reclaimed it, restored it completely, and established it as the site of the Shihezi Land Reclamation Museum, which officially opened in October 1995.

The museum is divided into three exhibition halls. The first hall on the left after entering is the "Ancient Shihezi" exhibition. It displays over a hundred unearthed artifacts such as pottery jars, stone tools, fossils, and bronzeware. Among them, the fossil of an eight-toed horse, dating back 3 million years, provides clues for finding traces of early primitive humans in the Shihezi area; the discovery of stone arrowheads is the first of its kind in Xinjiang and offers important material for archaeological work in the region. Turning right at the entrance leads to the second exhibition room, which showcases the glorious history of the land reclamation endeavor. Over a hundred farming tools used by reclamation soldiers, their clothing, and daily necessities illustrate the pioneers’ history of land clearing and development, telling the story of how the new city of Shihezi evolved from a barren Gobi desert into a modern garden city. Adjacent to it is the third exhibition hall, "Footsteps Continue," which mainly displays over 80 photos of the reclamation soldiers' labor and life during the pioneering period, as well as photos of central leaders visiting Shihezi.　

Shihezi, Xinjiang