CHINA

CHONGQING. SIGHTS OF INTEREST. Chongqing Museum
 

Collection of more than 100 000 items: artifacts of the Palaeolithic Age, fossil bones of vertebrates, relics of the ancient states of Ba and Shu (3 000 years before), funerary objects of bronze pots, wine vessels, mirrors, waist-band hooks, a weight used on a balance, knives, royal seals uncovered from boat-shaped coffins. 

Relics of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – AD 220) include sculptured fish-shaped bricks and stones, pottery figurines. Other priceless collections are 4 000 pieces of top quality pottery and porcelain articles of past dynasties, 5 000 scrolls of calligraphy and painting by great calligraphists and artists of the Song (960 - 1279), the Yuan (1279 - 1368) and the later dynasties. 

You’ll see the relics and handcraft articles of the Qiang, the Tibetan, the Yi, the Miao, and the Tujia ethnic people of Southwest China. 

The majority of these objects has come from tombs of people, more often they were tombs of wealthy people, as the custom was the deceased to bury with objects of everyday life (farming, hunting, entertainment). You’ll see the different ways of it: for example, Han tombs were elaborate affairs but the people of Ba (as you know already, living 2 000 years ago) disposed of their dead in even more singular fashion, encasing corpses in canoe – shaped wooden coffins and suspending them from cliffs along the river. And of cause you’ll see two of those huge coffins and the artifacts found inside them. The museum is worth visiting. You’ll have the opportunity to get a completed picture of those times.