Hunan Provincial Museum is situated in the northeast of Changsha City. Built in 1951 and opened to visitors in 1956, this museum occupies an area of 50,000 square meters with a construction area of 20,000 square meters.
This museum contains a collection of more than 110,000 objects, including 763 pieces of first class cultural relics. It's variety of pieces consists of stone implements of the Neolithic Age, potteries, Bronze ware of the Shang and Zhou periods, relics from the Chu State and relics from a big tomb excavated in 1972 - Mawangdui Han Tomb.
Besides, Yuezhou celadon produced from the Eastern Han to the Tang period, Changsha colorful porcelain produced in the Tang, the facsimiles of Wang Xizhi's Prologue to the Orchid pavilion Collection and the handwriting of Wang Fuzhi, the great thinker of the early Qing period, are also housed there.
Among all these collections, the relics from Mawangdui Han Tomb are most excellent and miraculous.
In 1972, gravesites from the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-8AD) were excavated in Mawangdui, northeast of Changsha. It was proved to be the graveyard of Licang family that lived during the Western Han period about 2000 years ago.
Three tombs were unearthed successively, in which the one of Marquise Dai, Licang's wife, was most famous. Countless elegant and elaborate objects such as trappings and decorations which made her stay in the afterlife a more pleasant one were found in her tomb, of these a T-shaped silk picture, supposedly a banner for the soul, is the most fascinating. It is in extremely good condition and describes the voyage of the dead to the next world. The painting techniques and the color are of the highest quality. But more astonishing still was the body of the Marquise herself. It was swaddled in 20 layers of silk and was found surprisingly well preserved and in remarkable condition, from skin to inner organs. Her skin is still of elasticity and her fingerprint can be seen clearly.
