Museum Of Chinese Characters

Overview

As China is one of the earliest birthplaces of human civilization, Chinese characters are among the most ancient ones in the world. That’s the reason why China built its first Museum of Chinese Characters in Anyang City of Henan Province.

With the theme of Chinese character, the museum aims to protect China’s traditional cultural heritage and make enough room for protection and cultural research of ancient Chinese civilization.

Location

The Museum of Chinese Characters is located in Anyang City, in the north of Henan Province, where the oracle script, China’s earliest inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells dating back to more than 3,000 years, was discovered in 1899.

Anyang City is situated 200 kilometers on the north of Zhengzhou City, and it's only about two hours' bus ride from Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province. The museum is located on the east of Renmin Avenue of Anyang City, right besides the city’s East Bus Station.

Features

The museum shows the evolution of Chinese characters since ancient times, showcasing cultural relics, including rubbed stone inscriptions, bronze vessels of the Shang (1600-1046 BC) and Zhou (1066-256 BC) Dynasties, Chinese seal engraving, ancient coins, writing bamboo and silk, and calligraphy work from different dynasties.

Besides Han characters, which are widely used by China's Han, Hui and Man ethnic groups, the museum also houses items bearing more than 40 other types of written languages used by China’s other minority ethnic groups, including the Tibetan, Uygur and Kazak.

In the exhibition hall, which covers 34,500 square meters, school textbooks written in languages of minority ethnic groups, such as Zhuang and Miao, are displayed along with bronze tripods and silk scrolls with square-shaped Han characters.

The model of the Chinese Character Museum have drawn from the character "墉" of hieroglyph, it covers 143 acres, 34500 square meters of construction size and the total investment of 537,510,000 Yuan. The main building use gulosity mark and panchi mark pattern sculpture in the roof of the Yin and Shang periods, it is a post-modernism constructions that have both modern architectural and Yin/Shang palace styles.