Travel in special museums

The Eyes are the window of the soul, while the museums are the eyes of the cities, through which visitors can learn the history of the cities as well as their development and promising future.

If you want to know more about China, visiting museums is a good option. Besides some famous big museums like the Palace Museum and the Capital Museum, small and specialist museums also have a story to attract you.

China National Tea Museum

Located in the Longjing (Dragon Well) Village -- a tea growing area south of the West Lake District in Hangzhou, the China Tea Museum was completed and opened to the public in October 1990. It occupies an area of 3,500 square meters and comprises 4 groups of buildings with displays outlining the traditions of growing tea south of the Yangtze River. Here you can learn about the history of tea, the best varieties and the etiquette of tea drinking in China.

The four separated buildings are respectively of exhibition, tea sipping and tasting, tea service ceremony, and multi-function. The exhibition building is again divided into 6 exhibition zones, including history of tea-growing, the varieties and distribution of tea in China, events related to tea, various tea utensils used in the old dynasties and tea-drinking habits in different parts of China with tea-related culture. Visitors can also learn about the scientific and technological aspects of tea growing and processing.

No.2 building has been a fine locale for a number of cultural activities on tea, including a series of international seminars on tea culture and exchange.

No. 3 and 4 buildings serve as tea drinking and performance sections, which not only introduce you the way to drink tea in detail, but also display various drinking rituals seen in different provinces and foreign countries.

One of the largest theme museums in Hangzhou City, the China Tea Museum lies with the green hills at its back and tea plantations in front. In the museum the trees made a shade everywhere with flowers in bloom all the year round. It is a calm and quiet place for relaxing and enjoying a cup of tea.

China National Silk Museum

Situated at the southern bank of the West Lake, in Hangzhou City of Zhejiang Province, China National Silk Museum is the first state-level professional silk museum in China as well as the biggest silk museum throughout the world. It opened to the public in 1992 and since 2004 people can visit it for free.

The museum owns eight exhibition halls, including: the Preface Hall, Relics Hall, Folk-custom Hall, Dyeing and Weaving Hall and Modern Achievements Hall.

The Preface Hall introduces the 5000-year-long history of Chinese silk culture. China is the earliest country that engaged in sericulture, filature and making clothes with silk. This hall provides strong evidence for this fact and shows the history of the Silk Road through which silk was spread abroad.

Relics Hall presents several preserved relics, which cover almost every dynasty of ancient China, and a number of pictures to explain Chinese traditional silk culture. These relics are from various districts of China, including those excavated along the Silk Road, on the grassland of Northern China, and in the south of China. It should be mentioned that tourists can appreciate a piece of fragmentary brocade that dates back 5,630 years. That is the earliest silk that has ever been discovered.