Shaanxi History Museum is a comprehensive history museum of the national level. In 1973, when former primer Zhou Enlai came to Xi’an as an inspection tour, he felt sorry for that Shaanxi province played an important role in Chinese history and culture but there was no modern museum to display the cultural relic unearthed in this province. Under the order of Primer Zhou, the nation and province government invested 0.144 billion Yuan to built the Shaanxi History Museum in 1983. Here on display is the highlight of Chinese civilization.

In Shaanxi History Museum, there are over 370,000 cultural relics, from stone tool of Neolithic society to people’s daily living ware of before 1840 A.D., coving a history range of over 1 million years. Among those, the most famous cultural relics are bronze wares in Western Zhou dynasty, Terra Cotta Warriors and weapons in Qin Dynasty, mural paintings in Tang dynasty, porcelain in Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. Besides, the Han dynasty paper, Tang dynasty bronze mirrors, gold and silver ware and currencies in different dynasties are also treasures of national level.

The structure of this museum is a Tang dynasty styled, covering an area of 55,600 square meters. The museum can be divided into several sections due to the history order.

Preface Hall

The back ground of the preface hall is a basso-relievo of impetuous Yellow River. Being the Mother River and cradle of Chinese civilization, the Yellow River passed though Shaanxi province from the north part. The Yellow River reach was also the area where the earliest Asia ancient sage lived. In front of the basso-relievo stands a sculpture of walking lion. This lion was a reproduction of the stone lion from Shunling Mausoleum (the mausoleum of the mother of Empress Wu Zeting in Tang dynasty). According to the history record, lion was introduced to China from Afghanistan. So, in a way, the reproduction of lion in Tang dynasty is also the representative of cross-country communication in ancient China.

First Exhibition

The first exhibition starts from app man lived in Shaanxi Province 1.15 million years ago and ends at Qin dynasty. Here on display are stone tools of Stone Age, Pointed- bottom bottles of Banpo People (5,000-6,000 years ago), bronze pots of Western Zhou dynasty (about 3,000 years ago), as well as the Terra Cotta Soldiers of Qin dynasty (about 2,200 years ago).

The pointed-bottom bottle was invented by Banpo people, a clan lived to the east of nowadays Xi’an city. The bottle in that time was used as a container to get water from river or lake. Because of the pointed-bottom, when the empty bottle was thrown into the water, the bottle will be submerged and water will fill in from the bottleneck. As the water filling in, the center of gravity moved from the middle part of the bottle to the bottom, and then the bottle stands in the river and the water will not leak from the bottleneck. In 6,000 years ago, the ancient sage did not master the knowledge of making water well, the pointed-bottom bottle worked as a water container.

Second Exhibition

The second exhibition shows the cultural relics from Han dynasty and the coming short dynasties, such as the famous Three Kingdom.

A model of the Silk Road shows how the famous cultural exchanging road was explored. History records that the original purpose to explore the Silk Road was to look for strong horses from the Middle East. Because at the beginning of Han dynasty, the country was invaded by the nomadic Hun people lived in what’s now Mongolia. The Central Plains horses in that time was just short and weak, and this became the main reason that the country was not the equal of Hun People in a war. Because before Han dynasty, no Chinese businessman or diplomat once tried to travel from China to other western countries, so there was no path to go across the high mountain to reach Middle East. Zhang Qian, a diplomat of Han dynasty took up the task and finally reached nowadays Middle East. From that time on, Western world began to know China and China also welcomed thousands of western businessmen and diplomats. After Zhang Qian explored the Silk Road, Chinese Silk was the first to be introduced to Middle East and Europe, hence the name Silk Road. Then Chinese tea and porcelain reached Western world successively.

Third Exhibition

On display in the third exhibition hall are almost Tang dynasty cultural relics, such as mural painting, gold and silver wares and tri- colored porcelain.

This museum collets mural paintings form more than 20 mausoleums of Tang dynasty. Those mural paintings rank the top not only by quantity, but also by art value. Because all the mural paintings was a layer of wall taken off from the mausoleums of about 0.5 cm to 1.0 cm, the museum also set aside a special hall for those paintings for the sake of protection. What is seen in the third exhibition is just the copies.

The museum was repaired before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and now it is a comprehensive museum with modern equipment.

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