Museum sights in Běijīng
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A
Military Museum
From the humble swords and rifles of earlier eras, to the tanks and fighter planes of more modern times, as well as surface-to-air missiles, there’s enough hardware on display here to start WWIII. But despite the martial tone, this is one of Beijing’s more popular museums. The sections on China’s many wars are fascinating, although there’s a lack of English captions.
reviewed
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B
Imperial City Exhibition
Substantial portions of Běijīng survive solely in a twilight world of fading nostalgia. This fascinating museum is devoted to the Imperial City (Huáng Chéng), which – beyond its fragmented constituent parts – exists largely in name alone. The museum is within the Changpu River Park (Chāngpú Hé Gōngyuán), a delightful, if contrived, formula of marble bridges, rock features, paths, a stream, willows, magnolias, scholar and walnut trees north of Dongchang’an Jie. The museum functions as a memorial to the demolished imperial wall, gates and buildings of the Imperial City. A diorama in the museum reveals the full extent of the yellow-tiled Imperial City Wall, wh…
reviewed
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C
Science & Technology Museum
Some exhibits at this museum are showing their age, but kids can run riot among the main hall's three floors of hands-on displays. Watch industrial robots perform a flawless Taichi sword routine, try chatting with the speech robot who only seems able to say '对不起，我没有听懂你的话' ('Sorry, I didn't catch you'), follow a maglev train gliding along a stretch of track or test out a bullet-proof vest with a sharp pointy thing.
You could spend half the day working through the imaginative and educational displays in the main hall (Hall A), but if you want to make a real go of it, Hall B (astrovision theatre) and Hall C (Children's Scientific Entertainment Hall) o…
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D
Lao She Museum
Parcelled away down a small hútòng off Dengshikou Xijie, this simple museum was the courtyard home of much-loved Běijīng author Lǎo She. Peruse the author's life via newspaper cuttings, first editions, photographs and personal effects. The museum glosses over the most salient event in the writer's life: his vituperative beating by Red Guards in August 1966 and his death by drowning in Taiping Lake the following day.
reviewed
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E
Mao Dun Former Residence
This small and unassuming museum off Jiaodaokou Nandajie is deep in the heart of the historic hútòng quadrant southeast of the Drum and Bell Towers. Mao Dun was the pen name of Shen Yanbing (1896–1981), who was born into an elite family in Zhèjiāng province but educated in Běijīng. In 1920 he helped found the Literary Study Society, an association promoting literary realism. Mao Dun joined the League of Left Wing Writers in 1930, becoming solidly entrenched in the bureaucracy after the communists came to power. He lay low during the Cultural Revolution, but briefly returned to writing in the 1970s. The museum is typically parsimonious and low-key.
reviewed
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F
Beijing Natural History Museum
The main entrance to this overblown, creeper-laden museum, closed for refurbishment at the time of research, is hung with portraits of the great natural historians, including Darwin and Linnaeus. The contents range from dinosaur fossils and skeletons, including a mamenchisaurus jingyanensis – a vast sauropod that once roamed China – to creepy-crawlies, an aquarium with Nemo-esque clown fish and an exhibition on the origins of life on earth. Make sure your children don’t wander unaccompanied into the creepy Hall of Human Bodies, where a ghoulish selection of spliced human cadavers and genitalia awaits.
reviewed
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G
Xu Beihong Museum
The Chinese artist Xu Beihong (1895–1953), best remembered for his galloping horses that injected dynamism into previously static forms of Chinese brushwork, is commemorated in this intriguing museum. Exposed to foreign (principally European) painting styles, Xu possessed one of 20th-century China’s more fertile imaginations. The communists feted Xu, which partly explains the success and longevity of his name. His success is celebrated here in seven halls and remembered in a collection of oils, gouache, pen and ink sketches, and portraits.
reviewed
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H
Lu Xun Museum
Lu Xun (1881–1936) is often regarded as the father of modern Chinese literature. Born in Shàoxīng in Zhèjiāng province and buried in Shànghǎi, Lu Xun lived in Běijīng for over a decade. As a writer, Lu Xun, who first trained in medicine, articulated a deep yearning for reform by mercilessly exposing the foibles of the Chinese character in such tales as Medicine and Diary of a Madman. The exhibits range from photos and manuscripts to personal effects.
reviewed
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I
Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum
Located within what is called the Hall of Jupiter (太岁殿; Tàisuì Diàn) is the excellent Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum (09:00-16:00) which informatively narrates the elements of traditional Chinese building techniques. Brush up on your dǒugǒng brackets and sǔnmǎo joints, get the lowdown on Běijīng's courtyard houses, while eyeballing detailed models of standout temple halls and pagodas from across the land. English captions.
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J
Capital Museum
This rewarding and impressively styled museum contains a mesmerising collection of ancient Buddhist statues and a lavish exhibition of Chinese porcelain. Further displays are dedicated to a chronological history of Běijīng, cultural relics of Peking Opera, a Běijīng Folk Customs exhibition and exhibits of ancient bronzes, jade, calligraphy and paintings.
reviewed
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K
China Numismatic Museum
This intriguing three-floor museum follows the technology of money production in China from the spade-shaped coins of the Spring and Autumn period to the coinage and paper currency of the modern day. Of particular interest are the top-floor samples of modern Chinese paper renminbi, from the pragmatic illustrations of the first series to the far more idealistic third series (1962) and the fourth series dating from 1987, still adorned with Mao’s head.
reviewed
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L
Songtangzhai Museum
Just east of the Confucius Temple is the relocated Songtangzhai Museum, where you can view a lovely collection of traditional carved gateways, drum stones, Buddhist effigies, ancient pillar bases and stone lions. It advertises itself as being free but that’s only the front part; if you delve into the more interesting rear section, you get stung for Y30 (or Y100 for a tour with a guide – not worth it).
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M
Hall of Jewellery
On the western and eastern sides of the Forbidden City are an assortment of libraries, temples, theatres and gardens. Some are now museums that require additional entry fees. Make sure you visit the Hall of Jewellery, and don’t miss the Clocks & Watches Gallery. The gallery boasts a dazzling array of timepieces, many of which were gifts to the Qing emperors from abroad.
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Clocks & Watches Gallery
On the western and eastern sides of the Forbidden City are an assortment of libraries, temples, theatres and gardens. Some are now museums that require additional entry fees. Make sure you visit the Hall of Jewellery, and don’t miss the Clocks & Watches Gallery. The gallery boasts a dazzling array of timepieces, many of which were gifts to the Qing emperors from abroad.
reviewed
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O
Beijing Wangfujing Paleolithic Museum
Archaeologists and anthropologists will be rewarded at this simple museum detailing the tools and relics (stone flakes, bone scrapers, fragments of bone etc) of Late Pleistocene Man who once inhabited Běijīng. The discoveries on display were unearthed during the excavation of the foundations of Oriental Plaza in 1996. To find the museum, take exit ‘A’ from Wangfujing Station.
reviewed
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P
Arthur M Sackler Museum of Art & Archaeology
Home to an important, well- presented collection of relics from primordial China, including the skeleton of the 280,000-year-old Jinniushan Man, this museum is tucked away on the leafy campus of Peking University. It’s a good spot to escape the hustle of Wudaokou. To get here, enter via the west gate of the university and follow the signs.
reviewed
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Q
Beijing Imperial City Art Museum
Devoted to maintaining the memory of the imperial city, this museum has visitor-friendly English captions, a permanent collection of impressive Ming- and Qing-era ornaments and rotating temporary exhibits, often from the Forbidden City. Check out the diorama of old Beijing for a sense of how impressive the imperial city was.
reviewed
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R
Paleozoological Museum of China
A little bit cheesy, with an impressive tally of zero English captions, but young palaeontologists can scurry among the dinosaur remains and legions of Chinese schoolchildren, gawping at skeletons of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Tsingtaosaurus and examining the parrot-like beak of Psittacosaurus.
reviewed
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S
China National Museum
Housed in a sombre 1950s edifice on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square, this museum has become a permanent work in progress, shut for redesign for at least the last two editions of this book. The spotlight of public attention has swung instead to the more happening Capital Museum out in the west of town.
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T
Běijīng Planning Exhibition Hall
For Chinese cities undergoing a facelift, a planning exhibition hall is de rigeur. The exhibition is all a rather suffocating back-slapping paean to the Běijīng of tomorrow but the detailed diorama of the modern metropolis is worth a look.
reviewed
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Beijing World Art Museum & China Millennium Monument
Housed in the bombastic China Millennium Monument, the World Art Museum hosts excellent temporary exhibitions that run the gamut of ancient art to modern design and avant-garde photography. A ticket to the monument, which is shaped like a giant sundial, gets you into the museum as well.
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V
Poly Art Museum
Caressed with Chinese music, this excellent museum displays a glorious array of ancient bronzes from the Shang and Zhou dynasties and an exquisite gathering of standing Bodhisattva statues. Resembling a semidivine race of smiling humans, most of the statues are from the Northern Qi, Northern Wei and Tang dynasties. It's a sublime presentation and some of the statues have journeyed through the centuries with pigment still attached. In an attached room are four of the Western-styled 12 bronze animals plundered during the sacking of the Old Summer Palace. The pig, monkey, tiger and ox peer out from glass cabinets – you can buy a model for Y12,000 if you want.
reviewed
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W
Beijing Police Museum
A fascinating insight into the Beijing underworld and the police you see everywhere in the city. There are plenty of English captions and details of crackdowns on brothels, class traitors, opium dens and spies, as well as uniforms, weapons and gruesome crime-scene photos.
reviewed
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X
Qianmen
This 15th-century gate, also known as Zhengyangmen, was once part of the city walls that divided the ancient inner city from the outside world. At the time of writing it was closed for renovations, but when open it offers a view over Tiananmen Sq.
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Y
National Art Museum of China
More English captions would be nice, but this professional museum attracts Chinese art lovers with often excellent temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art from home and abroad.
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