Hunan Museum

Hunan Museum

Shaped like a futuristic helmet pagoda and stuffed with nearly ten thousand years of astonishing treasures, the Hunan Museum ranks with the finest in China. The museum itself is state of the art, with interactive displays and objects taking you on a journey from the origins of the province (and China itself), through intricate four-thousand-year-old bronzes, relics of the Shang dynasty (who invented Chinese writing in the Second Millennium BC) and through to the present. The most astonishing artefacts are from the Second Century BC Han Dynasty Mawangdui tombs belonging to nobleman Li Cang and his wife Xin Zhui . They were unearthed in the1960s, and are to Hunan what the Terracotta Army was to Shaanxi. the thousands of items unearthed offer a near complete portrait of a rich and sophisticated aristocratic life over two thousand years ago. They include an exquisite silk banner showing Xin Zhui on her journey to heaven, lacquers, medical texts, religious and astrological books, ceramics and silks woven with astonishing skill and dexterity.