Gansu Jiandu Museum

Gansu Jiandu Museum
甘肃简牍博物馆

Address: No 12 Yintan Nanlu, Qilihe district, Lanzhou, Gansu province
Opening hours: 9am -5pm (last entry 4:30 pm)
Closed Mondays (except for national holidays)
General admission: Free admission with valid ID card (passport for foreign visitors)
Tourists need to book within one week in advance online.
Tel: (+86 931) 7920666, (+86 931) 7830666

Gansu Jiandu Museum is a specialized museum that integrates the collection, preservation, research, exhibition and education related to jiandu – the bamboo and wooden slips upon which things were generally written in China before the widespread introduction of paper.

It currently houses a collection of 50,129 artifacts with bamboo and wooden slips the main focus, preserving the largest amount of jiandu dating back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

Nearly 40,000 bamboo and wooden slips are kept in the museum, including the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) slips of in Fangmatan, an archaeological site in Tianshui, and Han Dynasty bamboo slips excavated from the Juyan site between 1972 and 1976. Over 10,000 other relics have been unearthed, including lacquerware, metalwork, ancient papers, silk and textiles, and bamboo and wood items.

The museum runs four regular exhibitions, featuring a detailed introduction of Jiandu, the grand stories on the Silk Road discovered through bamboo and wooden slips, and the story of daily life in border regions during the Han Dynasty.