Guizhou Provincial Museum, located at No.47 Beijing Lu, Guiyang, is a comprehensive museum featured various aspects of the province’s minorities. It was built in January 1953 and opened to public in September 1958 and officially free for visitors at April 7, 2008.
The collections of the museum are over 70000 pieces, which are classified into four degrees as following: Natural Specimen, Historical Relics, Minority Culture Relics and Modern Culture Relics.
The Natural Specimen include the fossils of front teeth and front molar of the Tongzi Ape-man, the lower jawbone and the thighbone of the Xingyi Man, the skull and the upper and lower jawbone of the Chuandong Man; the fossils of extinct mammals and various kinds of typical stone artifacts and bone objects.
The Historical Relics consist of Painted Pottery, the relics of fire-using, ancient bronze drum of Warring Period (475 BC to 221BC), various kinds of weapons such as Ge (dagger-axe, an ancient weapon), an iron sword with bronze handle and lance; the bronze carriage of Han Dynasty, the pottery of The Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 AD to 581 AD), the stone carving and bronze drums of Song Dynasty(960 AD to 1234 AD) and the textile of Ming Dynasty (1368 AD to 1644 AD) and over 3000 pieces of the calligraphy works and paintings of the celebrities during Ming and Qing Dynasties.
The minority culture relics is the highlight of the Museum, which includes various aspects of the province’s minorities, such as costumes, ornaments, handcrafts, implements of production and living, for example, the traditional dress and the customs from Yelang kingdom (an ancient kingdom believed to have originated in the Warring Period (475 BC to 221BC) and a small collection dating back to the 18th and 19th century when the Miao staged a series of uprisings in protest against the rapid immigration of Han people into Guizhou province.
Besides, there are Modern Culture Relics including the notifications, weapons and stone carvings during the farmer uprising of Qing Dynasty; the notification of Guizhou provincial Government during the Revolution of 1911 (the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen which overthrew the Qing Dynasty) and the revolutionary books, notifications, weapons, documents, photographs and so on during the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945).