A comprehensive museum directly under the provincial Bureau of cultural relics, the Museum of Hebei moved from its original site in the Garden of Ancient Lotus Pond, Baoding, to Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, in May 1982. At the end of 1986, the provincial exhibition center merged with the museum and a new museum edifice was constructed, which was modeled on the design of the Great Hall of the People of Beijing. It is a two-story building with 9 exhibition halls on each floor. A square, with a round pond and fountains surrounded by pots of flowers, facing the entrance of the Museum, provides a pleasant setting to this institution.
The museum has a store of more than 150,000 items of relics, 100 pieces of which are of the first class, and many others are rare treasures. The priceless items include two pieces of jade clothes sewn with gold threads exhumed from the tomb in Mancheng County, Hebei, of Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of Zhongshan of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), and his wife Dou Wan; a bronze lamp of the imperial Changxin Palace, and a gold-inlaid bronze incense burner, stone statues of the Northern Dynasties (386-581) unearthed from the Xiude Monastery, Quyang County, Shanxi Province; and blue and white porcelain wares of the Yuan Dynasty (1276-1368), unearthed from Baoding. Relics of modern times include those from the Yihetuan Movement of 1900, papers concerning the students' work-study program in France during the late 1910s, material objects related to the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (photos and other records about the tunnel warfare, and the mine warfare) of 1937 to 1945.
