Shaoguan Museum

Shaoguan Museum

Shaoguan Museum is a classic red tourism destination and a patriotic education base.

Established in 1961, Shaoguan Museum was originally located in Fengcai Tower in the city center. In 1998, the Shaoguan Municipal Government invested over 23 million yuan to build a new museum on Gongye West Road in the urban area.

The new museum was completed in March 2001. The museum complex covers an area of 17,300 square meters and is the most heavily invested and largest key cultural facility built by the Shaoguan Municipal Government in recent years. It is also a landmark building in Shaoguan.

The main building is a four-story, 7,500-square-meter modern courtyard-style structure. Floors one to three house 11 exhibition rooms, totaling 3,188.75 square meters. The western part of the building contains offices and various functional rooms, totaling 36 rooms. The front facade of the building features two distinctive red sandstone reliefs. The left relief depicts the ancient legend of “Emperor Shun ascending Shaoshi Mountain and performing Shao Music,” while the right relief illustrates the life of the “Maba Man” from over 100,000 years ago. The museum name inscribed above the entrance was written by the renowned Chinese painter and calligrapher Zhang Ding.

Shaoguan Museum is a comprehensive museum primarily focused on local history. It collects and displays historical relics unearthed in the city, revolutionary artifacts from wartime periods, as well as other types of cultural relics passed down through generations. The current collection includes over 5,000 items, most of which are historical relics excavated in the city. Among these, a set of pottery models from the Eastern Han and Jin dynasties is particularly precious, vividly reflecting many aspects of social life at the time. Currently, four exhibition halls are open to the public.

The "Shaoguan Humanistic History Exhibition" uses a combination of images and artifacts to introduce Shaoguan’s ancient history from the Maba Man and Shixia Culture to the modern revolutionary struggle during the Liberation War period. The "Ceramic Collection Exhibition" showcases fine porcelain pieces from the museum’s collection along with some locally unearthed pottery, aiming to promote China’s outstanding traditional culture and disseminate knowledge about ceramics. The "Calligraphy and Painting Collection" displays selected ancient calligraphy and paintings, works by renowned modern artists, as well as rubbings of stone inscriptions preserved in the city throughout history. The museum plans to launch seven permanent exhibitions.

The museum has robust cultural relic protection measures in place, including advanced closed-circuit television surveillance systems, carbon dioxide fire suppression and alarm systems, all connected to the municipal alarm center. It is one of the few municipal-level museums in Guangdong Province to meet national standards and is capable of hosting various temporary exhibitions.

Free admission

Open Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00–16:30; closed on Mondays, but open during holidays

http://www.shaoguanmuseum.com/

Address: Gongye West Road, Wujiang District, Shaoguan City Postal Code: 512000

Tel: 0751-8172290

Further Reading:

· National Second-Class Museum of China