Lianyungang Museum

Lianyungang Museum
连云港市博物馆

Address: No 68 Chaoyang Donglu, Haizhou district, Lianyungang, Jiangsu province
Opening hours: 9 am -5:30 pm (last entry 5 pm)
Closed Mondays (except for national holidays) and on Chinese New Year’s Eve
General admission: Free admission with valid ID
Tel: (+86 518) 85681748 (+86 518) 85681726

Lianyungang, formerly known as Haizhou, is an important coastal port in East China. As the origin of Taoism, the earliest area that Buddhism spread to after its introduction to China, and the home of the ancient Dongyi (lit. “Eastern Barbarians”) civilization, it holds significant historical and cultural importance. The city also has gained widespread fame through the two literary classics, Journey to the West (Xiyou Ji) and Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua Yuan).

Lianyungang Museum, established in 1973, is located at the foot of Mount Huaguo which is believed to be the real-life inspiration for Flowers and Fruit Mountain, the birthplace of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King in Journey to the West.

Lianyungang Museum has a rich collection of nearly 10,000 cultural relics, reflecting the rich historical and cultural heritage of the coastal city through ceramics, jade and stone artifacts, gold and silver wares, bronze and iron wares, lacquer and wooden objects, calligraphy and ancient books, revolutionary cultural relics, and works from the Yan Han Art Museum—a gallery built within the museum and dedicated to showcasing works donated to the museum by Yan Han.

The museum features a permanent exhibition of fine historical relics, four special displays and a landscape plaza exhibiting stone artifacts. The special exhibitions highlight China’s oldest and most complete county-level administrative documents written on bamboo and wooden slips discovered to date, the well-preserved female wet mummy, cultural artifacts related to Journey to the West and significant works of Yan Han (1916-2011), a highly respected and influential Chinese artist and a native of Lianyungang, best known for his woodcut prints and later his ink paintings.

The exhibition of Journey to the West focuses on the cultural legacy of this novel, elaborating on the origins of the culture inspired by this classic novel and the close connection between Journey to the West and Lianyungang through research materials, different versions of the novel, comic books, stamps, and other artifacts. The gallery offers video screenings of the film and an animated series of Journey to the West.