Nanjing Museum 南京博物院

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today at the Nanjing Museum — one of China's three great museums. We'll be moving through the site in this order: Main Gate and Grand Hall → History Gallery → Special Exhibitions Gallery → Digital Gallery → Republic of China Gallery → Art Gallery → Intangible Cultural Heritage Gallery.

Let's start with a quick introduction to the museum itself. The Nanjing Museum traces its origins to 1933, when the educator Cai Yuanpei proposed the establishment of the National Central Museum Preparatory Office — making it the first large-scale, comprehensive museum in China built with national funding. Take a look at the grand hall in front of you. Designed by architect Xu Jingzhi and revised by Liang Sicheng, it was completed in 1948 and modeled on the style of the Liao dynasty — specifically inspired by the gate of Dule Monastery in Ji County, Tianjin. This was actually the first time Liao dynasty architectural style had been applied to a large museum in modern Chinese history. The proportions are precise, the presence commanding. The building is recognized as a twentieth-century architectural heritage of China.

The museum follows a "one institution, six galleries" model: the History Gallery, Special Exhibitions Gallery, Art Gallery, Republic of China Gallery, Digital Gallery, and Intangible Cultural Heritage Gallery. Its collection holds over 430,000 artifacts, more than 370,000 of which are classified as treasures — second in number only to the Palace Museum in Beijing. Admission is free, but advance reservation is required. On Monday mornings the museum is only open until noon; Tuesday through Sunday it opens at 9:00 a.m. and closes at 5:00 p.m., with last entry at 4:00 p.m. To get here, take Metro Line 2 to Mingguqong Station, exit at Exit 1, and walk east for about five minutes. Please note: flash photography and tripods are not permitted anywhere in the museum.

Now, let's walk through the grand hall and into our first stop — the History Gallery.

The History Gallery is our first stop. Its permanent exhibition, "Ancient Civilization of Jiangsu," moves chronologically from the deep past to the Ming and Qing dynasties across six halls. Let's head up to Hall 1 on the second floor.

As you step inside, take a moment to look at the large prehistoric scene reconstruction in the center of the hall. Jiangsu sits in the lower Yangtze River basin, a landscape that in ancient times was blanketed with dense forests and crisscrossed by waterways — home to elephants, rhinoceroses, elk, and all manner of large animals. The dinosaur skeletons and ancient animal dioramas on display here carry you back to a world teeming with life, millions of years ago.

One item near the entrance of Hall 1 is easy to walk past without noticing, but it deserves a close look — the Openwork Jade Pendant with Human, Bird, and Beast Figures. Dating from the Liangzhu culture (approximately 5,300 to 4,300 years ago), it is one of the eighteen supreme treasures of the Nanjing Museum, known here as the "Heavenly Connector." Standing barely five centimeters tall, it is carved with an intricate interweaving of human, bird, and beast imagery — and it is the earliest known example of this type of openwork jade carving ever found in China. That the Liangzhu people could achieve such delicate, layered imagery on a piece of jade this small — without metal tools — is a level of craft and imagination that completely redefines what we expect from the "ancient world."

Now let's move into Hall 2, which is divided into two sections.

The first section is "Wonders of Nature: The Prehistoric Spirit." Look at the artifacts in the cases here relating to early inhabitants of the Nanjing region. The skull fossil of Nanjing Man tells us that human activity in what is now Jiangsu dates back at least 350,000 years. Moving forward in time, settlements began forming around 8,000 years ago, and by around 6,000 years ago, wet-rice cultivation was already underway. Take a look at this set of charred Neolithic rice grains unearthed in Liyang — thousands of years old, yet their shape and grain structure remain clearly visible. These are the physical evidence that Jiangsu was one of the most important centers of rice farming origins in southern China.

The second section is "The Age of States: Wu and Yue in the Spring and Autumn Period." During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, early state formations began to emerge in the Jiangsu region. By the middle and late Spring and Autumn period, the famous rivalry between the states of Wu and Yue played out right here. Look at this group of artifacts: a Western Zhou bronze zun unearthed in Changzhou, a Spring and Autumn period bronze dove-staff from Zhenjiang, and a gold-and-silver-inlaid bronze animal vessel from the Warring States period found in Lianshui. The craftsmanship and decorative motifs on these bronzes mark the point at which Jiangsu's regional culture was being woven into the larger fabric of Chinese civilization. One piece to pay special attention to is the Gold and Silver-Inlaid Bronze Pot with Inscription — the museum's "Heavenly Craft Treasure." The inscription on its body can be cross-referenced with historical texts, making it an invaluable artifact for the study of Warring States history.

Hall 2 also contains one exceptionally significant piece — the Jade Cong with Combined Human and Animal Face Patterns. A masterwork of jade carving from the Neolithic Liangzhu culture, its square exterior and circular interior symbolize the ancient cosmological concept of a round sky over a square earth. It was a ritual object used by the Liangzhu people to communicate between the human and divine realms. Look at the human and animal face patterns carved into its four sides — the lines are precise down to the millimeter. In an age before metal tools, this was a staggering achievement.

Now we enter Hall 3. This is one of the richest halls in the entire History Gallery. Jiangsu was the birthplace of Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han dynasty — the very land where the Han rose to power — and as a result, Han dynasty artifacts excavated from Jiangsu are extraordinarily abundant.

The first must-see: the Gold Seal of the King of Guangling. Not far from the entrance of Hall 3, look carefully at the small gold seal in the display case — barely two centimeters square, cast in solid gold, with the four seal-script characters "Guangling Wang Xi" (Seal of the King of Guangling) incised into the face. Just how significant is this? It is the only Han dynasty gold seal of a Liu-surnamed vassal king ever found in China, and the museum considers it its "Seal of Authority." Unearthed in Yangzhou in 1981, it even played a role in authenticating a gold seal found in Japan bearing the inscription "Han Wei Nu Guo Wang" (King of the Wa State, Vassal of Han) — because the form and script of the two seals match so closely, the Guangling seal indirectly confirmed that the Japanese seal was indeed granted by Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han. Small as it is, this object stands as material proof of 2,000 years of exchange between China and Japan.

The second must-see: the Jade Burial Suit with Silver Thread. You're looking at a funerary garment made from over 2,600 pieces of Hetian jade stitched together with approximately 800 grams of silver wire — the first Han dynasty silver-thread jade suit ever scientifically excavated and fully restored. Under Han dynasty burial protocols, emperors were interred in suits with gold thread, vassal kings in silver, and this suit belonged to a descendant of the King of Pengcheng. Notice how jade plugs cover the eyes, nose, ears, and the other seven orifices of the body — a reflection of the Han belief in "treating the dead as the living," and in jade's power to preserve the body for eternity.

The third must-see: the Silver-Inlaid Bronze Ox Lamp. This Han dynasty lamp takes the form of a water buffalo turning its head to look back — horns curved, expression endearingly placid. But its most remarkable feature isn't the design; it's the engineering concept behind it. When the lamp burned, smoke traveled through the hollow horns and into the water-filled belly of the ox, where soot was absorbed and filtered — releasing clean air into the room. In other words, someone in China invented an eco-friendly lamp 2,000 years ago, over a thousand years before comparable designs appeared in the West. The museum calls it the "Lamp of Light."

The fourth must-see — and arguably the most valuable single object in the entire museum: the Golden Beast. Weighing 9,100 grams with a gold content of 99%, it is the largest and heaviest gold artifact ever excavated in China. Unearthed in 1982 at Nangyaozhuang in Xuyi, it combines casting and hammering techniques to create a crouching creature covered in spots across its entire body. Many people ask: is it a tiger? A leopard? Something else entirely? No scholarly consensus has ever been reached — and that mystery only makes it more compelling. The museum knows it as the "Guardian Treasure."

Let's head downstairs to Hall 4. Halls 3 through 6 are all on the first floor of the History Gallery. Hall 4 covers Jiangsu during the Six Dynasties period — the Eastern Wu, Eastern Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen. Nanjing served as the imperial capital during the Six Dynasties for roughly 330 years in total, making this one of the most glorious chapters in the city's history.

There is one piece in this hall that you simply cannot skip — the Brick Relief Mural of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi. The museum calls it the "Portrait Treasure," and it was unearthed from a Southern Dynasty imperial tomb at Xishan Bridge in Nanjing. The mural is assembled from nearly 300 individual tomb bricks and preserves in full the figures of Ji Kang, Ruan Ji, Shan Tao, Wang Rong, Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Ruan Xian, and the ancient hermit Rong Qiqi. Each figure is separated from the next by ginkgo trees, pines, and scholar trees. The robes flow freely, and every face has its own character — Ji Kang playing his guqin, Ruan Ji mid-cry, Liu Ling clutching his wine jug. Assembled about 1,500 years ago, this is the earliest and most intact large-scale figural brick painting discovered in China. It captures the spirit of the Wei-Jin literati — their disdain for social convention, their embrace of personal freedom — what later generations came to call "the Wei-Jin manner."

This hall is also home to another of the museum's supreme treasures — the Celadon Mythical Beast Zun, designated the "Spirit Vessel Treasure." This Western Jin celadon vessel is shaped like a wide-mouthed, wide-eyed mythical creature — somehow both fierce and endearing. An inscription was incised into its belly before firing, making it one of the earliest Chinese ceramic pieces bearing a maker's mark, and an important artifact for tracing the history of Chinese porcelain.

Halls 5 and 6 cover Jiangsu from the Sui and Tang dynasties through the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing.

Hall 5's theme is "The Metropolitan South." With the opening of the Grand Canal during the Sui and Tang periods, Jiangsu became the economic engine of the entire country. Look at the Tang dynasty gold and silver wares, Yue ware celadons, and sancai glazed ceramics unearthed from Yangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, and elsewhere — each piece a snapshot of Jiangnan's remarkable wealth and vitality. The hall also features a reconstruction map of Jiankang (the Tang and Song-era name for Nanjing) that gives a vivid sense of how the city was laid out during the Song dynasty.

Hall 6 brings us to Ming and Qing dynasty Jiangsu. By this period, Jiangsu had become the most prosperous province in the country, with Suzhou, Nanjing, and Yangzhou each serving as a major center of economic and cultural life. The centerpiece of this hall is the Glazed Archway from the Porcelain Tower of Bao'en Temple. The Porcelain Tower was one of the defining landmarks of Ming dynasty Nanjing — rising 78 meters and clad entirely in multicolored glazed bricks. European visitors who came to China at the time called it one of the Seven Wonders of the Medieval World. The glazed relief carvings on the archway remain vivid in color to this day — astonishing, given that they are more than 600 years old. The tower itself was destroyed during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period, and this archway is all that remains, inviting us to imagine what the full structure must have looked like.

That completes all six halls of the History Gallery. From Nanjing Man 350,000 years ago to the prosperous Jiangnan of the Ming and Qing, we've just traveled through the full arc of Jiangsu's civilizational history in less than two hours. Next, let's pass through the corridor on the first floor of the History Gallery and make our way to the Special Exhibitions Gallery.

The Special Exhibitions Gallery is a five-story independent building connected to the History Gallery by a corridor. This is where the museum concentrates its finest thematic installations and rotating temporary exhibitions.

Let's start with Gallery 9 on the second floor — the Hall of Supreme Treasures. This space displays the museum's eighteen supreme treasures on a rotating basis. The most significant piece you're likely to find here is the Gilt Tibetan-Style Stupa — the museum's "Stupa of Enlightenment." This group of early Ming dynasty artifacts, dating from 1436 to 1439, was unearthed from the underground chamber beneath the stupa at Hongjue Temple on Niushou Mountain in Nanjing. Look at the arrangement: four blue-and-white porcelain vases sit on a square red sandstone base, with an elaborately carved miniature gilt stupa at the center, its surface covered in dense relief carvings of Buddha figures and Sanskrit text. In front of the stupa sits a tiny golden coffin, inside which a golden image of Shakyamuni reclines in repose. What makes this group of objects uniquely significant is that it is the only miniature gilt Lamaist stupa ever found in China, blending Tibetan Buddhist tradition with the finest Ming imperial court craftsmanship.

Beyond the Hall of Supreme Treasures, the other floors of the Special Exhibitions Gallery offer equally rewarding permanent installations. On the second floor, the exhibition of Qing imperial porcelain from the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong reigns brings together the peak achievements of Qing ceramic art — Kangxi's cobalt-blue-and-white, Yongzheng's pastel-hued famille rose, Qianlong's dazzling array of colored glazes, each more extraordinary than the last. The third floor hosts the museum's clock and timepiece collection, featuring not only enamel pocket watches presented as tributary gifts from the West, but also self-chiming clocks made by Guangzhou and Suzhou craftsmen during the Qing dynasty. On the fourth floor, "Approaching the Buddha: An Exhibition of Buddhist Art" presents Buddhist sculpture from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the Qing.

Two more of the museum's supreme treasures are housed in the Special Exhibitions Gallery and are easy to overlook: the Underglaze Red Plum Vase with Three Friends of Winter Motif ("Imperial Kiln Treasure" — the only surviving covered Hongwu-era underglaze red plum vase in existence); and the Blue-and-White Porcelain Censer with Longevity Mountain and Blessed Sea Motif ("Treasure of Fortune and Longevity" — a Xuande imperial kiln masterpiece, notable for its commanding size and the deep, vivid blue of its cobalt decoration).

That's a quick pass through the Special Exhibitions Gallery. Now let's head back to the first-floor corridor — our next stop is the Digital Gallery.

The Digital Gallery sits between the History Gallery and the Republic of China Gallery, and is divided into a physical exhibition space and a virtual online component.

The physical hall covers about 1,200 square meters and uses multi-screen displays, transparent screens, real-time compositing, and motion capture technology to reinterpret ancient civilization through the language of modern technology. You can "flip through" ancient scroll paintings with hand gestures, or use your body movements to interact directly with artifacts on screen. For younger visitors and international guests who are less familiar with Chinese history, this is the most accessible entry point in the entire museum — no background knowledge required. You'll find yourself understanding things simply by playing.

The virtual gallery is the online extension of the Digital Gallery — a complete digital version of the physical exhibitions, accessible through the internet and image-recognition technology, open around the clock, every day of the year. The journey doesn't have to stop when you leave.

The physical hall is compact; a full circuit takes about fifteen to twenty minutes. The exit leads directly into our next stop — the Republic of China Gallery.

Friends, we're about to step into a remarkable journey through time. Walk out of the Digital Gallery and into the Republic of China Gallery, and you won't find the glass display cases you'd expect in a conventional museum. Instead, you're standing in the middle of a fully recreated Nanjing street from the Republican era.

Overhead is a simulated sky — maybe it's a clear afternoon, maybe you've caught it at dusk, glowing with color. Underfoot are flagstones. On either side, storefronts in Republican-era European style line the street: a post office, a train station, a barber shop, a traditional pharmacy, a bookshop, a silversmith, a food shop. Every member of staff wears clothing in the fashion of the period — and these shops are actually operating. You can mail a postcard from the post office, complete with a special Nanjing Museum stamp. You can browse for thread-bound books. You can fill a traditional herbal prescription at the pharmacy. You can pick out a piece of Republican-era silver jewelry. You can buy a piece of Jiangsu's local confectionery.

Look down the street at the vintage Ford automobile and the locomotive, and at the telegraph counter with its Morse code machine — every detail has been researched and reconstructed. The Republic of China Gallery is an immersive documentary of Nanjing a century ago. There's no glass between you and the exhibit, because you are part of it.

The photo opportunities here are outstanding — standing at the post office door mid-letter, or waiting on the station platform for a train that will never arrive, these are classic shots. One tip: if you want the street to yourself, come here first thing when the museum opens.

Take the stairs up from the Republic of China Gallery and we'll arrive at our next stop — the Art Gallery.

The Art Gallery is the museum's home for fine art — 7,000 square meters housing galleries of sculpture, painting, and calligraphy across the dynasties, plus four dedicated halls honoring artists with deep ties to Jiangsu.

Let's start with the sculpture gallery. The museum's sculpture collection spans an extraordinary range — from Shang dynasty stone carvings unearthed at the Yinxu site in Henan, to Han dynasty tomb figurines from Sichuan, to Buddhist sculptures in the styles of the Yungang and Longmen cave temples, to Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing wooden carvings, brick reliefs, and bamboo carvings. There is one Tang dynasty guardian figure that's particularly striking — every muscle rendered with full, living force. Standing before it, you can feel the raw energy of a craftsman working more than a thousand years ago.

The painting gallery systematically traces the artistic achievements of ten regional Jiangsu schools of the Ming and Qing periods — the Jinling school, the Yangzhou school, the Wumen school, and more. One piece here must be singled out: Xu Wei's "Miscellaneous Flowers" Handscroll, the museum's "Ink Wash Treasure." Xu Wei was one of the most extraordinary and turbulent artistic minds of the Ming dynasty. Across more than ten meters of continuous scroll, he painted thirteen varieties of flowers and vegetables in broad, uninhibited brushwork — the richness of the peony, the cool purity of the lotus, the wild energy of a vine of grapes — each stroke a deliberate break from tradition. It is no overstatement to say that without Xu Wei's "grand freehand" style, there would have been no Bada Shanren, and no Qi Baishi after him. This scroll is not always on permanent display; if it happens to be shown the day you visit, do not walk past it.

The four dedicated artist halls each focus on one major figure: Fu Baoshi — one of the twentieth century's greatest Chinese landscape painters, whose signature "Baoshi brushstroke" technique created landscapes of exceptional sweep and atmosphere; Chen Zhifo — a master of fine-brushwork flower-and-bird painting whose works marry the elegance of traditional Chinese line drawing with the precision of Japanese and Western painting; Su Tianci — an oil painter who found a way to render the poetry of Jiangnan through a Western medium; and Wu Weisan — a contemporary sculptor whose concept of "freehand sculpture" captures the spiritual essence of cultural giants — Li Bai, Qi Baishi, Leonardo da Vinci — in bronze.

In the Boai Hall on the first floor of the Art Gallery, look out for the digitized display of Matteo Ricci's world map, the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu. In 1602, Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci and Ming dynasty official Li Zhizao collaborated to produce this map — the first time Chinese people ever saw all five continents laid out on a single image. Standing here, you are standing at the very moment China first opened its eyes to the world.

The Art Gallery contains a great deal to take in. Feel free to follow your own interests as we go. When you're ready, follow me downstairs to our final stop — the Intangible Cultural Heritage Gallery.

Friends, our tour of the Nanjing Museum is drawing to a close. From the 350,000-year-old remains of Nanjing Man in the History Gallery to the street scenes of Nanjing a century ago in the Republic of China Gallery, six pavilions have traced the complete arc of Jiangsu's civilization.

Before we part, three things worth carrying with you:

First: the Nanjing Museum is more than a museum — it is the starting point of China's modern museum tradition. When Cai Yuanpei said in 1933 that "education is not confined to schools; a museum is just as important an institution of learning," that was a radical idea for its time. It still holds up today.

Second: behind 430,000 artifacts are 430,000 stories — but the number isn't what matters. What matters is the thread that runs between them. When you walk out of the Nanjing Museum and look back at the Liao-dynasty-style grand hall, you have just walked through 10,000 years of Chinese civilization.

Third: if your time is limited, remember the three essential stops: the jade burial suit with silver thread and the Seven Sages brick mural in the History Gallery; the gilt Tibetan-style stupa in the Special Exhibitions Gallery; and the immersive street in the Republic of China Gallery. These three represent the museum's finest ancient artifacts, its most exquisite examples of historical craftsmanship, and its most original approach to museum design.

Thank you for joining me today. If you have time to spare, the Ming Palace ruins and Zhongshan Gate are right next door — the story of Nanjing extends far beyond these walls. Safe travels, and goodbye!