Gansu Provincial Museum

The Museum houses a superb collection of the Neolithic pottery for which Gansu is famed.Exhibits are clearly and informatively labelled in English.The storage rooms bulge with more than 432,000 objects.The display is on the second floor and includes primitive agricultural stone tools and red-grey bowls and vessels from the rich Dadiwan site,in centeral Gansu.The utensils are 6,000 to 12,000 years old.

  Also on the second floor is a Han Dynasty exhibit of bronze vessels,axe heads,riding accoutrements and more than 20,000 documents written in ink on wooden tablets.Discovered in northwestern Gansu,the documents record the history of the region,including military events at the garrisons.Most interesting are the many bronzes found in the Leitai Han Tomb in Wuwei,especially the ‘Flying Horse of Gansu’,an elegant 245-millimeter-high figure of a horse poised with its rear hoof on the back of a small bird.

  Dating from the Wei and Jin dynasties is a painted brick tomb taansported from Jiayuguan in the Hexi Corridor.Bricks from tomb number vive have been reconstructed in their original form in the grounds of the museum.

  On the third floor are exhibits relating to the Red Army’s 10,000-kilometer Long March in 1935,which ended west of Gansu.