Qing Dynasty gilded bed and hanging noodles in the Jiyaxuan Cultural and Art Museum
A museum, as a distinct cultural symbol, exists in the city and serves as a memory carrier for a certain historical stage of the city. With the pace of rural revitalization in Haishu, batches of rural museums and cultural centers have emerged, and some old objects that trigger nostalgia have come to life here and become colorful cultural landscapes.
During the 14th Five Year Plan period, Zhejiang Province plans to build 1000 rural museums and incorporate them into practical projects for people’s livelihoods. Among them, this year Ningbo City plans to build 46 museums and Haishu District plans to build 10. Among them, the Meiyuan Revolutionary Historical Site Exhibition Hall in Yinjiang Town has been successfully established as one of the first batch of Zhejiang Provincial Rural Museums. With the promotion of rural revitalization strategy, it is urgent to establish rural museums and art galleries.
How can the Haishu Rural Museum help rural co prosperity? Apart from rural museums, what other types of museums are there? How will Haishu create a “museum area”? The reporter visited rural museums and similar museums on site to explore the truth.
Yuan Xifang (left) introduces the collection situation
Rural Museum
Placing Hundred Flavors of Homesickness
What is a rural museum? Rural museums are cultural venues located in rural areas that inherit excellent traditional Chinese culture, promote socialist core values, and focus on showcasing, disseminating, collecting, and inheriting regional historical and cultural characteristics, revolutionary culture, rural production and life, intangible cultural heritage protection, and industrial development. They are open to the public and have museum functions.
Rural museums, as a new phenomenon in Zhejiang Province’s implementation of the rural revitalization strategy and continuous promotion of the “big garden” construction, are a new form of museum and an excellent path to maintain nostalgic memories, inherit local cultural roots, assist in rural revitalization and development, and promote deep integration of culture and tourism.
For the construction of rural museums, Haishu has been working hard. Among them, the Jiyaxuan Cultural and Art Museum in Shanxiazhuang Village, Jishigang Town is a vivid case of transforming art and culture from solo music to collective music.
Entering the Jiyaxuan Cultural and Art Museum, you will be greeted with porcelain and other handicrafts from the Ming and Qing dynasties. As you reach the third floor, you will see a dazzling array of ancient furniture and wood carvings from both China and the West. Here, breaking the boundaries of time and space, a “dialogue” spanning thousands of years unfolds slowly.
It is understood that the collection of over 3000 items at the Jiyaxuan Cultural and Art Museum was collected, preserved, arranged, and displayed one by one by entrepreneur Yuan Xifang. Shanxiazhuang Village is the place where I was born and raised. In 1982, I opened a factory in the local area and began bringing my collection back to my hometown in 2006, hoping that these could carry my strong nostalgia. Yuan Xifang told reporters that in 1987, he expanded his business to Shanghai. With the development of reform and opening up and the improvement of the economic situation, his business grew bigger and bigger, giving him an economic foundation to carry his artistic dream from a young age.
At the beginning, the main focus was on collecting Chinese style porcelain and wood carvings. Until 2009, when Yuan Xifang visited foreign museums, he developed a strong interest in European culture and gradually collected many Renaissance furniture. He also opened a collection exhibition hall in Vancouver, Canada.
In 2014, Yuan Xifang returned to Shanxiazhuang Village, Jishigang Town to establish a factory, and also sorted and displayed his collections, establishing the Jiyaxuan Culture and Art Museum. At first, I wanted to build a storage base for my interests and hobbies, but later I thought it would be convenient for the surrounding villagers to understand relevant cultural knowledge and enrich their spiritual and cultural life through subtle influence. Therefore, Ji Yaxuan opens to the public every Tuesday to Sunday from 8:30 to 16:30. Yuan Xifang said that whenever he is in the museum, he personally introduces the stories and sources of these collections to the villagers, I also hope that more and more surrounding villagers will come to watch and communicate with him about art and culture..Build it into a multifunctional and integrated rural museum.
In Haishu, there are many rural museums like Jiyaxuan: the Lamp Culture and Art Museum, also located in Jishigang Town, has a collection of over 3000 ancient Chinese and foreign lamps, as well as stone lamp holders with a long history, exquisitely carved jade lamp holders, and exquisitely crafted copper lamps, hanging lamps, etc; The Du Ao Art Museum, located in Zhangshui Town, closely combines artificial architecture with the natural environment, maximizing the preservation of historical relics and local culture, showcasing collections such as oil paintings, watercolors, calligraphy, sculptures, and photography; The Huanggulin Grass Weaving Museum, located in the Gulin section of Yinxian Avenue, is the first grass weaving museum in China. The museum is divided into a museum exhibition hall, a grass weaving craft demonstration hall, and a Huanggulin grass weaving handicraft exhibition and sales hall, showcasing the inheritance and development history of Huanggulin grass weaving skills to visitors in detail; The Wang Sheng Museum, located in Xinzhuang Village, Gaoqiao Town, showcases various tools and tools of agricultural culture, such as oil mills, milling houses, and others. It also tells the story of the rise and fall of the “Wang Sheng Rice” over the past century.
Lijiakeng Art Museum
Quasi museum
Retain City Memory
With the development of the times, the term “museum” is increasingly appearing in the lives of ordinary people in the core area of Haishu, a historic and cultural city. And “museums” are not just museums that display cultural relics in a narrow sense, but more and more diverse and diverse “quasi museums” are constantly emerging.
According to the introduction, “quasi museums” refer to venues that have or have the nature and functions of partial museum collection, display, and education, including memorial halls, former residences of celebrities, military history halls, factory history halls, school history halls, village history and local sentiment halls, exhibition halls, planning halls, art galleries, art galleries, and other forms.
In recent years, the construction of museums in Haishu District has continued, mainly taking the opening of the Wangjingmen City Wall Site Museum as an opportunity, relying on the numerous ancient buildings and rich cultural heritage resources in the region, and focusing on the development pattern of “two cores and three belts”, to create a “one dragon head, four series, and multiple nodes” Haishu Museum Group. We plan to focus on building four museum cultural belts with Mingzhou Luocheng and Yinjiang Ancient Town as the two core areas, with the Wangjingmen City Wall Museum as the main exhibition hall, “said Yu Lan, Deputy Director of the Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports Bureau of Haishu District, forming a museum group that highlights Luocheng and covers the entire area, allowing citizens and tourists to embark on a museum cultural journey between the streets and alleys of the old city and the scenery, forming the industrial foundation of the museum group, Becoming a new highlight in inheriting the urban context.
At the end of last year, the Wangjingmen Ruins Park project was completed. This year, the Wangjingmen City Wall Ruins Museum is undergoing security upgrades and is about to open to citizens. Entering the south main entrance of the exhibition hall, a long timeline is quite eye-catching, and the “major events” of Ningbo’s development are marked one by one. Walking through the “Preface Hall”, the second chapter “City Wall Reproduction” focuses on presentation. This chapter is divided into two units, namely “From Literature to Discovery – Luocheng Archaeology of Wangjingmen Section” and “From Protection to Exhibition – Construction of Wangjingmen Ruins Park”. The third chapter “City Chronicles for a Thousand Years” extends from the Wangjing Gate to the entire city of Ningbo, with the main theme of the construction, addition, destruction, and demolition of Ningbo’s city walls in history, the manifestation of changes in urban spatial layout, and the development of ports and the “Maritime Silk Road” as the background. It reflects the different characteristics of urban site selection, planning, layout, and urban style presented in specific geographical environments and historical backgrounds. The rammed earth wall of the Tang Dynasty was upgraded to a brick wall in the Song Dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty experienced city destruction and reconstruction, the Ming and Qing dynasties rebuilt it, and the Republic of China demolished it. The entire axis related to the Ningbo city wall was vividly restored through various technological means such as scene restoration and animation demonstration..There are more than 10 quasi museums that have some museum functions but have not yet met the registration and filing requirements, with a total of over 40 museums.
Huanggulin Grass Weaving Museum
Museum Area
Beautiful Cultural Business Card
Since the beginning of this year, Haishu has vigorously promoted the construction of museums, implemented a similar museum cultivation plan, and actively created a museum area of “Walking in the City, Searching for Memory”. Taking advantage of the favorable opportunities of the comprehensive development of urban and rural construction and the rapid advancement of urbanization, it has actively combined museum construction with major planning, regional renovation, scenic area construction, etc., and incorporated museum construction into the overall planning for scientific layout, Promote the agglomeration and development of museums, so that the museum industry can serve the citizens and benefit the public.
In addition, our district also implements differentiated support policies and management measures for museums of different industry types and development levels based on the actual situation of the district, and constructs a precise service management pattern. At the same time, adhere to the concept of distinctive and differentiated development, cultivate unique brands of local museums, art galleries, and art galleries; Adhere to combining the construction of museum areas with the exploration of characteristic culture and the development of cultural and creative industries, to achieve coordinated promotion and mutual benefit.
In this process, Haishu will focus on the development pattern of cultural tourism with “two cores, three areas, and three belts”, relying on the development strategy of “along the river, along the road, and along the mountains”. By establishing the Haishu Museum, a “one dragon head, four connected nodes” Haishu Museum Group will be created, with the Wangjingmen City Wall Site Museum as the leading museum, the Three Tanghe Cultural Belt and the “quasi museums” along the Siming Mountain and Water Cultural Belt as the support, and non-state-owned museums The diverse, distinctive, and vibrant Haishu Museum Group, consisting of multiple nodes such as rural museums, celebrity museums, intangible cultural heritage museums, and cultural preservation units, actively promotes the construction of the Tianyige Museum Phase II and the Water Conservancy Museum, making Haishu a museum area for “Walking the City and Searching for Memory”.
Wangjingmen Ruins Park (photographed by Zhang Haohua)
Journalist’s Notes
Digital Technology Brings Museums to Life
As the core area of Ningbo’s historical and cultural city, Haishu has fully explored and integrated the resources of its jurisdiction, built a batch of high-quality museums, and vigorously promoted the construction of rural museums. With the improvement of living standards, people’s demand for spiritual and cultural heritage continues to increase, and the construction of museums in our district also needs to adapt to the times.
In order to fully utilize the massive cultural relics resources in museums and other places, better meet the diverse cultural needs of the public, and comply with the development trend of the new era, museums can make full use of modern technology to “live” cultural relics. Through short videos, live broadcasts, digital exhibitions, and other forms, visitors can “travel” to the museum more conveniently and quickly, which can shorten the distance between cultural relics and the public and also promote the excellent traditional Chinese culture.