Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, is an important meeting place of The Yellow River culture, Silk Road culture, Central Plains culture and Western Culture, and the rushing Yellow River water runs through the city from west to east, forming a beautiful and unique "Hundred Mile Yellow River Style Line". Coming to Lanzhou, in addition to the Zhongshan Bridge along the Yellow River, the Waterwheel Expo Park, the Baita Mountain and other scenic spots, the Gansu Provincial Museum, which collects a large number of precious national treasures, is also a must-visit place for foreign tourists.
"Three thousand miles of the ancient silk road, eight thousand years of yellow river civilization." As one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization, Gansu has ranked among the major cultural relics provinces in the country with its special geographical environment and long-standing history and culture, and the Gansu Provincial Museum has also been promoted to a national first-class museum because of its unique conditions and rich collection. It is recommended that tourists come here to learn some historical and cultural knowledge of Gansu before starting their trip to the northwest.
The construction area of Gansu Provincial Museum is more than 21,000 square meters, and the architectural style is very unique. According to statistics, the museum has a collection of more than 350,000 historical relics, bringing together a large number of cultural treasures from ancient to modern Gansu, including more than 3,000 fine cultural relics and 17 national treasure-level cultural relics (groups), especially the Most Distinctive Precious Cultural Relics such as Gansu Faience Pottery in the Neolithic Era, Jian Mu Documents of the Han Dynasty, Treasures of the Han and Tang Silk Roads, and Fossils of Ancient Organisms.
Everyone has learned the text of "Ma Ta Fei Yan" when they were students, and they will not be unfamiliar with this fierce bronze horse in the picture, and it is also the first national treasure-level cultural relics that most people come into contact with. "Horse Flying Swallow", also known as "Copper Galloping Horse", the whole cultural relic is 34.5 cm high, weighs 7.3 kg, and the shape is exquisite. It is worth mentioning that the right hind hoof of the bronze horse steps on a bird, which not only stabilizes the center of gravity of the copper horse, but also shows a high degree of romantic mood.
"Ma Ta Fei Yan" was not only well received by domestic experts and scholars, but also received unanimous praise from foreign scholars when it was exhibited in the United Kingdom and France in 1973. Since 1973, the mainland has issued a total of 5 stamps of "Ma Ta Fei Yan". In 1983, "Ma Ta Fei Yan" became the symbol of the Mainland Tourism Bureau. However, what many people don't know is that the "Ma Ta Fei Yan" is actually the head of the bronze carriage horse honor guard team excavated from the Leitai Han Tomb in Wuwei City.
In 1969, members of Wuwei Fresh Commune excavated a war-ready tunnel in the south of Leitai, and a few pickaxes went down to dig out a tomb made of green bricks. The burial chamber is littered with neatly arranged bronze men and bronze carriages and horses, and next to it is a coffin bed with two skeletons. After research, this is an ancient tomb of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which has a history of 2,000 years. Although the ancient tomb has been excavated many times in history, more than 230 precious cultural relics have been unearthed, including this "Ma Ta Fei Yan".
Judging from the archaeological findings of the Leitai Han Tomb, these bronze galloping horses combine the advantages of western horses and Mongolian horses, and can be called treasures in ancient bronze art. However, at the time of excavation, many copper carriages and horses were mutilated. Mr. Zhao Zhenmao, a famous bronze restoration expert at the Palace Museum, has successfully restored these national treasures with many years of experience. Nowadays, "Ma Ta Fei Yan" has been listed as the first batch of cultural relics prohibited from exporting, and has become the "treasure of the town hall" of the Gansu Provincial Museum.
On the Gobi Desert east of Jiayuguan City in Gansu Province, there are more than 1,400 underground mural brick tombs from the Wei and Jin dynasties (220-419 AD) buried. On October 31, 1972, the archaeological team unearthed more than 700 mural tiles, including the "Yi envoy map" from the Wei and Jin dynasties in China. This portrait brick vividly reproduces the scene of the envoys of the Northwest Frontier at that time sending documents, and is the earliest surviving image of ancient postal stations on the mainland, which has now become the symbol of China Post.
In the dinosaur pavilion on the third floor of the museum, the largest sauropod dinosaur in Asia, Mamen Xilong, is on display. In 1947, archaeologists found this dinosaur fossil with a length of 22 meters, a height of nearly 4 meters and a neck length of 9 meters in HaishiWan, Lanzhou, which was later named Mamenxi Dragon after research. Experts speculate that Mamenxi dragon weighed about 50 tons, lived in the late Jurassic period about 140 million years ago, was an amphibian, and now the Loess Plateau was a warm place with dense forests and lakes and swamps 100 million years ago.