Address: No 19, Guangxin Dadao, Xinzhou district, Shangrao city, Jiangxi province Opening hours: 9 am-5 pm (last entry 4:30 pm) Closed Mondays, Chinese New Year’s Eve, and Spring Festival (except for other national holidays) General admission: Free
The Shangrao Museum, whose predecessor is the Shangrao Municipal Cultural Heritage Administration, opened its new venue on May 18, 2019. It is a comprehensive museum dedicated to preserving the region’s rich cultural and historical heritage.
The new venue of the Shangrao Museum opens to the public on May 18, 2019. [Photo/Shangrao Museum official WeChat account]
The museum features five permanent exhibitions in different halls, each highlighting a different aspect of local heritage. The exhibition Blood Monument highlights Shangrao’s significant role in China’s revolutionary history. The exhibition A Land of Spiritual Beauty and Natural Grace chronologically traces the history of Shangrao. The exhibition A Continuous Cultural Lineage provides a detailed overview of the region’s cultural evolution. The exhibition A Place Blessed with Natural Treasures displays material culture reflecting its life and economic development. The exhibition Folk Customs and Practices presents local intangible cultural heritage items.
After visiting these halls, you will be stunned by the distinctive regional cultural characteristics of Shangrao, which are intriguingly known as “bai qian wan” (hundred, thousand, ten thousand) – revolutionary culture dating to a century ago, a millennium of impact by the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi (1130-1200), and ten-thousand-year history of rice cultivation and pottery craftsmanship.
Among the museum’s 15,086 pieces of collections, both the numbers of artifacts from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) inkstone workshop site and Song Raozhou mirrors rank among the highest in China.
A highlight of the collection is a Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) blue-and-white pear-shaped “yuhuchun” vase with “Zhou Maoshu’s love for lotuses” designs. It’s based on Ode to the Lotus, a classic essay by Song Dynasty philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017-73), whose courtesy name was Maoshu.
The Yuan Dynasty blue-and-white pear-shaped “yuhuchun” vase with “Zhou Maoshu’s love for lotuses” designs on display in the Shangrao Museum [Photo/Shangrao Museum official WeChat account]
