Shandan County Museum

Shandan County Museum

Shandan County Museum, which is located in the cultural street of Shandan County, is a place to commemorate the outstanding contribution and display of historical relics donated by international friend Louis Ailey. In 1980, Louis Ailey decided to donate all his nearly 4000 cultural relics collected in China for more than 50 years to the people of Shandan County. In order to commemorate the outstanding contribution of this international friend and display the donated historical relics, the people's Government of Gansu Province allocated 493000 yuan in 1982 to build the Ailey donated cultural relics memorial hall, which was completed in two phases. The first phase was completed and opened in June 1982, and the second phase was completed in September 1984.

Historical evolution

In March 1986, the people's Government of Shandan County decided to establish the Shandan County Museum. The name of Shandan County Museum is juxtaposed with that of the cultural relics exhibition hall donated by Ai Li, with two Museum name plates and a set of institutions under the County Cultural Bureau. This newly-built cultural relic exhibition hall with national architectural style is a brick and reinforced concrete structure. The main building has two floors, with hard mountain and single eaves. The second floor is equipped with front and rear veranda. The exhibition halls on both sides of the main building are symmetrical, and the plane layout is quadrangle. It covers an area of 4600 square meters and a building area of 1434 square meters.

Shandan County is located in the middle of Hexi Corridor in Gansu Province, adjacent to Wuwei in the East, Zhangye in the west, Qinghai in the South and Inner Mongolia in the north, with a total area of 5402 square kilometers and a total population of 200000. It has a vast territory, beautiful mountains and rivers, rich natural resources and a long history. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, it was an important town on the Silk Road and a must pass from Lanzhou to Dunhuang. The county seat is close to the 312 national highway. The Lanxin railway and 312 national highway run through the whole county. There are five 181 km provincial highways and eight local highways leading to the counties, townships and junmachang District, forming a traffic network extending in all directions. The county has complete communication facilities, and modern means of communication have been widely used.

There are many cultural heritages and rich tourism resources here. Not only is it located in the throat of the ancient Silk Road, since the Western Han Dynasty, the royal family has stationed troops here to raise horses, which is a military stronghold of ancient and modern times, but also it is well-known at home and abroad for its founding of the joint venture in 1940s by Louis Ailey, an old friend of the Chinese people and a famous social activist in New Zealand. Moreover, it has a lot of precious history and culture It is famous for its heritage and unique natural landscape. There are 155 cultural relics and historic sites in the territory (141 are listed as provincial and county-level protection units). Among them, the most well preserved historical sites in the country, the great wall of the Han and Ming Dynasties, which is regarded as the "open-air museum" by experts, the sand field ruins of the West Route Army in the 1930s, and the 35 meter high Shandan Great Buddha Temple, which is regarded as the "No.1 Buddha in the world" by Buddhist circles at home and abroad, are the most attractive religious resorts. At the same time, Shandan junmachang prairie and Yanzhishan Forest Park are natural scenery tourist resorts with vast area, unique scenery and full of magical legends, which are rare for summer vacation and holiday tourism. In addition, more than 5000 historical relics on display in the former residence of Ai Li, the mausoleum of Ai Li and He Ke, the Peili library and the exhibition hall of Ai Li donated cultural relics in Shandan County are also highly ornamental. In addition, the production of more than 270 kinds of tourist souvenirs and local snacks with unique flavor, including ten series of Shandan brand paintings, ceramics, cultural relic reproduction, root carving, stone carving, folk art paper-cut, which have won the national and provincial tourism product awards, constitute the basis and support for the development of Shandan tourism industry, and create the advantages for the vigorous development of Shandan tourism economy.

Shandan Museum, also known as the Museum of cultural relics donated by Ai Li, is located in Wenhua street of Shandan County. It was built in Shandan in 1982 by Gansu Provincial People's government to collect and display the great and legendary life of Ai Li and the precious cultural relics donated by him. It was named after AI Li. Chu Tunan, former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, inscribed the name of the museum - "Ai Li" Li donated cultural relics exhibition hall. Opened to the outside world in 1982, the whole building has a quadrangle structure with national characteristics. The main exhibition hall is a two-story building with Chinese and Western styles.

In order to display these precious cultural relics donated by Louis Ailey and let the masses of Shandan visit and study, Gansu Provincial People's government appropriated money to build a new exhibition hall of relics donated by Louis Ailey in Shandan County. The museum broke ground in July 1981 and was completed and opened in June of the following year. Regardless of his age, Louis airy came all the way to Shandan to participate in the opening activities.

Personage introduction

Louis Ailey (1897.12-1987.12) was a great internationalist and an outstanding New Zealand social activist. Since 1927, China has closely linked its own cause with the destiny of the Chinese people and strived for it. In 1944, Aili founded the Peili technical school in Shandan County, Gansu Province, which is a part-time work and part-time study school. Ali lived with the local people for nearly 10 years and established deep feelings. After he moved to Beijing in 1953, he regarded Shandan as his second hometown and visited it many times. In order to help the people of Shandan understand the origin and development of society, understand our past, present and future, so as to achieve the goal of realizing the four modernizations as soon as possible, and to make Shandan become a stop of the Silk Road tourism and have closer friendly exchanges with many countries (according to the quotations of ALI), in March 1980, he decided to donate the cultural relics collected in China for decades to the people of Shandan County. In the same year, he delivered more than 4000 cultural relics to Shandan.

On his 85th birthday in 1982, the Beijing Municipal Government awarded him the title of "honorary citizen". In 1985, Gansu Provincial Government awarded him the title of "honorary citizen". When he died in December 1987, Deng Xiaoping wrote an inscription for him: the great internationalist fighter is immortal.

architectural composition

There are six exhibition halls in the museum. One exhibition hall displays the life of Louis airy, including 109 objects, works and other cultural relics and 231 photos. From hall 2 to hall 5, there are 980 pieces of cultural relics donated by Louis airy. There are 71 pictures of Shandan Great Wall on display in the sixth hall. 105 cultural relics and specimens were unearthed from Shandan.

The collection is divided into two parts

1、 It is a collection of 4062 cultural relics donated by Louis Ailey, including Neolithic pottery, stone tools, three generations of bronzes, Qing Dynasty porcelain, trinkets and commemorative relics.

2、 The unearthed cultural relics in Shandan include Machang type, Siba type painted pottery and stone tools, as well as water and land paintings, which are the largest number of calligraphy and painting and other cultural relics. There are 5091 cultural relics in the collection.

Collection

There are more than 5000 cultural relics in the museum, including nearly 4000 donated by Louis Ailey, a famous New Zealand social activist, an old friend of the Chinese people and a great internationalist fighter. Among all the cultural relics in the collection, there are 27 first-class cultural relics, 215 second-class cultural relics and 1117 third-class cultural relics. At present, there are six exhibition halls, five basic exhibition halls and one temporary exhibition hall. In order to embody the glorious life and noble moral character of Louis airy, we used 265 precious photos of each period and more than 800 precious cultural relics donated by him to launch two major theme exhibitions, namely "the spirit of airy shines forever - the life story exhibition of Louis airy" and "the exhibition of fine collections".

Honors

The exhibition shows the splendid history of Chinese civilization and the deep friendship of this international friend to the Chinese people, and enjoys a high reputation at home and abroad. In 1995, it was named as the provincial patriotism education base by Gansu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China; in 2006, it was named as the advanced collective of cultural infrastructure management by the Ministry of culture; in 2005, it was named as the advanced collective of Municipal Youth Moral Education; now it is the municipal civilized unit, national defense education base, youth drug prohibition education base and youth crime prevention education base.

Opening Hours

The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Monday.

The visiting time in summer is 8:00-12:00 a.m. and 14:00-18:30 p.m.

Winter is 8:00-12:00 a.m. and 14:00-17:30 p.m.

geographical position

Shandan County Museum, also known as the exhibition hall of cultural relics donated by Ai Li, is located at No. 3, Wenhua street, Shandan County, Gansu Province. Post code: 734100

Address: Wenhua Road, Shandan County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province

Longitude: 101.09214019775

Latitude: 38.781860351562

Ticket information: free.

Chinese PinYin : Shan Dan Xian Bo Wu Guan