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The exterior of the Tibet Museum

Address: Tibet, Lhasa City, Southeast of Norbulingka

The Tibet Museum was officially inaugurated in October of 1999, with a permanent collection that celebrates the History of Tibetan Culture. The design of the exhibit uses traditional Tibetan architecture such as Tibetan doors, beam-decoration,patterns and so on, in order to create the atmosphere of authentic Tibetan art.
The History of Tibetan Culture Exhibition incorporates superb examples of several thousand years of Tibetan history, politics, religion, cultural arts, and customs. It ‘takes Tibetan history as the main thread and Tibetan culture as the center’in exhibiting the long history of the Tibetan people and their vast and deep culture. At the same time most of the historical objects also express the fact that Tibet is an inalienable part of Chinese territory.
This exhibit displays around 1,000 precious objects, in a space totaling around 3,000 square meters and with an exhibition line of around 600 meters. The contents are divided into pre-history culture, indivisible history, culture and arts, and people’s customs.

Prehistory
This covers a period that stretches back fifty thousand years to three thousand years before the present. The Karuo

An embroidered thanka displayed in the Tibet Museum

and Qugong sites are representative of the Neolithic in Tibet. With a large number of characteristic stone tools, pottery, bone objects and metal objects, this exhibition expresses the life of the ancient people of the Tibetan plateau. It also shows the cultural origins of the precursors of the Tibetan people, and their connections with the central plains civilization and Indus River civilization.

Indivisable History
This section includes material on different dynastic periods of Tibetan history, including Tibetan regional powers. Its main section revolves around the relationship between the Chinese central government and the Tibetan regional powers and discusses friendly relations between Han and Zang or Tibetan people. A large number of historically valuable objects are displayed as well as cultural relics that have political significance. These include seals, books, official documents, and so on, that clearly indicate the cordial relations that Han and Tibetan people have long enjoyed and the bonds of friendship due to the effective governance of Tibet by successive dynasties in China. It proves that Tibet has been an inalienable part of China since the Yuan dynasty.
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Address: Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Urumchi, Xibei Road, #132

The exterior of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum was established in the spring of 1953 in the People’s Park in Urumchi City. A new museum was later built in 1962 at a new site on Xibei Lu. The building occupies a space of 11,000 square meters and is built in a modern style enhanced by local architectural features. The central dome is thirty meters high and from its height one can view the entire city of Urumchi. The Silk Road derived its fame from silk.

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum has also become famous for its rich collections of silk artifacts from many periods of history. Brocades from Eastern Han are highlighted, as well as all kinds of specialized silk-woven items from the height of the Tang. These are as lustrous and beautiful today as when they were new and display weaving techniques that were highly refined many hundreds and even thousands of years ago. These are regarded as unique treasures by textile authorities and art historians around the world. A number of the articles on display here are the earliest extant examples of certain weaving technologies in China.

The Xinjiang Autonomous Region has long been a crossroads for many different kinds of people. Their diversity of scripts and cultures is exhibited in this museum through archaeological material, including documents in some twelve different scripts with a particularly large number from the Han-dynasty finds at Turfan. The documents
cover military, economic, cultural, and political affairs. Clay or terracotta sculptures are also featured in the Xinjiang Museum. Among these are single-humped Central Asian camels, fat and vigorous Yuan-dynasty horses, women figurines in all postures, impressively fierce soldiers, and so on. These were sculpted in a most natural and vigorous way and have been preserved as a result of Xinjiang’s arid climate.

A Loulan female corpse of more than 4,000 years ago unearthed in the Silk Road

The Xinjiang Museum has several dozen original Tang-dynasty paintings. Although these are not from the hands of famous painters, they still exhibit the vital Tang spirit. They include such subjects as women playing weiqi go or Chinese chess, children frolicking, ‘eight steeds,’people dancing and so on. Other items in the collections include microliths, silver works of art, stone stelaes, coins and currency, ceramics,wooden articles. Of particular note are various foods from the Tang dynasty which, through the arid conditions, have been preserved over the passage of more than one thousand years.

The ‘Hu King’ brocade unearthed from Astana ancient tombs in Turpan

In a similar vein, certain dessicated human corpses,called mummies although they were not treated with chemicals, are kept in the Xinjiang Museum. Some of these date back to 4,000 years ago. They are the earliest known such examples in China and are important in the study not only of humankind but of ethnic composition in this region at the time. Also in the museum are an Eastern-Han couple, buried together and well preserved, and a corpse from the Tang dynasty with well preserved skin and hair.

Presently, the museum opened new exhibits called the Xinjiang History Exhibition and the Xinjiang People’s Customs Exhibition. The history exhibit shows the history of Xinjiang by using material from its rich collections and highlighting material from recent archaeological discoveries. The Customs exhibition introduces the customs and cultural lifestyles of twelve different ethnic groups in Xinjiang, including the Uighur, Kazakh,Mongolian, Kirgiz, Hui, Tajik, Uzbek, Russian, Tatar, Daur, Xibo, and Manchu.

The exterior of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Museum

Address: Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hohhot City, Xinhua Dajie, #2

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Museum was founded on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, in 1957. The building, expressive of local minority characteristics, is located at the intersection of Xinhua Dajie and Zhongshan Lu in the heart of Hohhot City, the capital of the utonomous region.

The Museum holds 44,000 objects relating to ethnic history in its collections. Among these quite a few are
rare treasures seldom seen in China, especially the artifacts relating to the northern tribes called Xiongnu,
Xianbei, Qidan, Mongolians and others.

There are also a large number of cultural relics relating to northern people’s living and customs. The Inner

The fossil skeleton of a mammoth displayed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Museum.

An eagle-shaped gold crown of the Warring States period.

Mongolia Museum is a regional-level museum. One of the important sources of its collections are precious materials excavated from the earth as a result of archaeological research. These materials are one of the great specialties of the Museum.

This museum has also been active in collecting and preserving contemporary items that relate to the rich local culture. At present, there are more than 3,000 sets of such objects, which reflect the lifestyles and customs of a wide variety of Mongolian and other ethnic groups in the region. Among these, notable attractions include the costumes of Mongolian women from different parts of Inner Mongolia as well as Mongolian religious artifacts.

Inner Mongolia is also known as the ‘Land of Fossils.’ Specimens shown in the museum include massive dinosaurs, mastodons, and many other kinds of fossilized remains from the Mesozoic period that have attracted global attention.