New museum building opens at China's Shang Dynasty capital archaeological site

This aerial photo taken on Feb. 23, 2024 shows the new building of the Yinxu Museum in Anyang, central China's Henan Province. (Photo by Li An/Xinhua)

ZHENGZHOU, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- A new building of the Yinxu Museum in Anyang, central China's Henan Province, officially opened to the public on Monday.

Located near the archaeological site of the Yin Ruins, which is the location of the last capital of the Shang Dynasty (1600 B.C.-1046 B.C.), the expanded Yinxu Museum is the first national major archaeological museum to comprehensively present the Shang civilization.

The new building boasts an exhibition area of 22,000 square meters, where nearly 4,000 items or sets of cultural relics, including bronzeware, pottery, jade objects, and oracle bones, are on display.

About three-fourth of these relics are being exhibited for the first time to the public, along with multiple new achievements reached in relevant archaeological endeavors.

Visitors to the museum can purchase tickets through the Yinxu Museum official website as well as the museum and the Yinxu scenic area's WeChat public accounts.

The museum's old building was constructed in 2005. As archaeological work at the Yin Ruins continued to yield results, the building's mere 1,500-square-meter exhibition area became insufficient to effectively conserve and showcase the relics. This sparked the planning of the new building, and its construction began in November 2020.

The Yin Ruins is the first documented late Shang Dynasty capital site in China, as confirmed by archaeological excavations and oracle bone inscriptions.