Museum seeks antiques on Chinese writing

Further north in Henan province is the Chinese Writing Museum. Unlike the Shenzhen Museum's new facility, this museum houses artifacts that date back way beyond the past 30 thirty years. This week it asked for the donations or loans of antique writings and inscriptions for its new expanded facility.

The Chinese Writing Museum can be found in the city of Anyang, where the oracle bones bearing the earliest form of Chinese writing were unearthed more than a century ago. The museum was established as a major cultural project during the country's 11th Five-Year Plan from 2006 to 2010. Boasting a floor space of 34,500 square meters, the facility is dedicated to displaying the evolution of Chinese writing over a period of about four thousand years. It also displays the latest findings in the research on the Chinese language.

Scheduled to open early next year, the museum is expected to show around 4,000 items on a permanent basis. So far, it has acquired nearly 800 from across the province. Among them are stone tablet rubbings, bronze vessels, seals, and ancient calligraphy works. With the recently launched campaign, the museum is aiming to acquire another 3,200 antiques from around the nation.