Hebei Travel Notes: Handan Museum
At 1:30 PM on April 9, 2023, I got off at Handan Museum, and entered the museum at 1:40 PM to begin the tour.
Handan Municipal Museum is now a national first-class museum, a patriotic education base in Hebei Province, one of the first batch of social science popularization bases in Hebei Province, and a volunteer practice base in Hebei Province. Handan Museum was established in 1984, formerly known as the "Long Live Mao Zedong Thought Handan Exhibition Hall" established in 1968.
Construction of the new Handan Museum began in 2008. It is located on the west side of the city's landmark art center, on the east side of Fudong Street in Handan, facing Longhu Park across the street. It covers an area of approximately 12,000 square meters, with a total building area of 30,679 square meters and an exhibition hall area of over 15,000 square meters. As a major cultural project attracting the attention of the whole city, the new Handan Museum integrates modernity, intelligence, and experience, striving to become an "art palace," "learning classroom," and "leisure paradise" for the general public.
The new Handan Museum building has a total height of 35.5 meters, with one underground floor and six floors above ground. The underground floor houses a multi-function hall, underground garage, equipment rooms, and other supporting facilities. The first floor is the comprehensive service hall for visitors and the youth experience center, equipped with a nursing room, separate restrooms, and other facilities. The second floor is for temporary exhibitions. The third floor features the "Gandan" Glory - Handan Historical and Cultural Exhibition, showcasing Handan's development from ancient times to the present, comprehensively reflecting Handan's history, culture, and social changes. It serves as a cultural window to understand and learn about Handan. The fourth floor houses three distinctive themed exhibition halls: Cizhou Kiln, Ancient Stone Carving Art, and Chinese Historical Coins. The fifth and sixth floors are equipped with cultural relic protection laboratories, offices, and research rooms.
Handan Museum concentrates the essence of cultural relics from the entire city and the latest research results, with nearly 10,000 pieces (sets) of cultural relics in its collection. Among them, the most distinctive are relics from the early Neolithic Cishan culture site, pre-Shang cultural relics, pre-Qin and Han-Zhao cultural relics, Buddhist statues in Handan, and fine Cizhou kiln artifacts from various periods. The central hall on the first floor has three walls inlaid with copper hammered murals: "Light of Cishan," "Hufu Qishe" (Wearing barbarian clothes and learning archery on horseback), and "Jian'an Spirit," covering a total area of 210 square meters. These murals reflect three important periods of Handan's history and culture and are currently the largest indoor copper hammered murals in China, winning the Hebei Province Literary and Art Revitalization Award in 2002. In the center of the hall is a group of bronze horse sculptures based on the bronze horses unearthed from the Zhao King's Mausoleum, showing an imposing momentum and highlighting the brilliant Zhao culture. The "Gandan" Glory - Handan History and Culture Basic Exhibition draws on distinctive and important historical facts and cultural achievements in Handan's historical development. It traces the history of Handan's ancestors who thrived on this ancient land and created Handan's history with hard work and wisdom, arranged in 4 exhibition halls and 9 units, providing the public with a cultural window to comprehensively understand and recognize Handan.
Cizhou Kiln is a famous folk kiln in northern China, located in Cixian County and Fengfeng within southern Hebei Province, named after its ancient location in Cizhou. The Cizhou Kiln porcelain exhibition is divided into four parts: Part 1: Introduction - Exquisite and Heavy Celadon. Part 2: Historical Peak - The Competition of Black and White. Part 3: Northern Porcelain Capital - Pengcheng Kiln Shines Brilliantly. Part 4: Suiting Both Refined and Popular Tastes - The Rise of Blue-and-White and Multicolored Porcelain.
The Handan Ancient Stone Carving Art Exhibition displays stone carvings and statue art from the Northern Dynasties to the Song Dynasty in Handan, through individual statue relics, restored landscapes, and pictures.
The Round World - Chinese Historical Coin Exhibition is divided into three units: Unit 1: Currency in Spring and Autumn - displays various artifacts including natural shell coins from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, coins from various states during the Warring States period, Qin and Han banliang coins, various square-hole round coins across dynasties, Qing dynasty silver ingots and banknotes, modern machine-made coins and paper money, telling the grand history of Chinese currency development over thousands of years.
In addition, the temporary exhibition hall of the museum also displays lock exhibitions from Yangquan and Sanming cities. Don't underestimate Handan Museum; the content of this ancient Zhao capital is indeed rich and worth seeing. We stayed in the museum for a full two hours, my legs aching from exhaustion, but I had a great feast for my eyes and thoroughly enjoyed it.
At 3:30 PM, we finished our visit to the museum and took bus No. 605 to Congtai Square. I learned that there is a Hebei Cizhou Kiln Art Museum nearby. Not sure if it exists and is open, we decided to try our luck.
