Ancient Wood Museum

　　The Huzhou Ancient Wood Museum is located in the scenic Huzhou Taihu Lake Tourism Resort, surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing water on one. It is a multifunctional exhibition hall that combines science education, forest culture display, and appreciation of ancient wood art.

　　The exhibits in the museum are presented without carving, polishing, or coloring, preserving their original textures, colors, and unique shapes. With their rustic charm, majestic presence, extraordinary beauty, and representation of natural, ancient, primitive, and life-filled aesthetics, they showcase the beauty of nature. Most of the collections are irreplaceable global natural and cultural heritage items, possessing significant cultural, ornamental, and scientific research value.

　　Mr. Wu Xiaohong, a renowned Chinese collector of ancient wood and founder of the Oriental Plum Garden, dedicated his life to this endeavor. He traveled across the landscapes of China—from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Karakoram Mountains to southwestern forests, northwestern frontiers, Central Asian deserts, and the Thai-Myanmar border. After enduring countless hardships, he has now gathered these treasures in one hall in the south of the Yangtze River, composing a symphony of forest life. The museum currently houses over 1,000 rare pieces of ancient wood, presenting to visitors the "Soul of the Forest," "Flower of the Forest," "Tragedy of the Forest," "Song of the Forest," and "Rhythm of the Forest." These exhibits include silicified wood treasures formed from the Carboniferous to the Cretaceous periods (about 65 million years ago), as well as the wondrous creations shaped by natural forces over centuries.

　　The term "ancient wood" generally refers to silicified wood (also known as tree jade), sunken wood (also called ghost wood or driftwood), and sacred wood (standing dead trees). These ancient woods were once towering trees in the forest. Over geological eras, they endured the trials of fire, burial under soil, erosion by wind and time, and scouring by water, eventually emerging as today’s spectacular works of art.

　　Approaching these ancient woods is like traveling through time, as if reliving the historical shadows of ancient mountains and rivers, and experiencing the profound essence of life in the wild. It allows people to once again grasp the true meaning of the philosophy that “man and nature are one, and we should follow the laws of nature,” and to jointly build a beautiful home where humans and nature coexist harmoniously.