Hebei Museum

Hebei Museum
河北博物院

Address: 4 East Avenue, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province
Hours: 9:00-17:00 (entry until 16:30)
Closed Mondays
E-mail address: hbmuseum@sina.cn
General admission: Free (passport required for entry)

The Hebei Museum was originally founded in 1953 in the then capital city of Baoding. In 1982 it moved southwest to Shijiazhuang, the newly designated capital of the province.

Hebei Museum houses a collection of 240,000 works of art, rare books and fossils, the signature part of which lies in the cultural artifacts excavated from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) tombs in Mancheng county, the blue and white porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), and Quyang county’s white marble sculptures.

There are nine permanent exhibitions in the museum, elaborating on Hebei during the Stone Age, the civilization of the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC) in Hebei, stories of the states of Yan and Zhao, the Zhongshan State in the Warring States Period (476-221 BC), the Mancheng Tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, Quyang stone carvings, murals from the Northern Dynasty (386-581), the products of renowned local kilns, and Hebei during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945).

Among the collections are some rare treasures such as those unearthed from the Mancheng Tombs, including jade burial suits sewn with gold thread (jinlüyuyi), the Changxin palace lantern, the Boshan incense burner with gold inlay, and the white-glazed porcelain wares with black designs produced by the Cizhou Kiln of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The porcelain pieces include a pillow with a pattern showing a child playing with a ball, a pillow decorated with a boy fishing, a vase with a peony pattern, and a blue-and-white jar with a fretwork floral design in under-glazed red. Other notable collections include calligraphy and painting by famous Hebei artists and revolutionary relics of the War of Resistance against Japan Aggression (1937-1945).