One of the city’s major highlights, the Shaanxi History Museum (daily 9am-5.30pm, last entrance 4.30pm;RMB35, students RMB18; bags and cameras must be left outside) is an impressive modern building opened in ]992, on the route 0f buses #5 and #610 from the station, and within walking distance of tile l)axingshan Si and the Big Goose Pagoda. The exhibition Halls are spacious, well laid out, and have English captions, displaying to full advantage a magnificent collection of more than three thousand relics.
The lower floor, which contains a general survey of the development of civilization until the Shang dynasty, holds mostly arrowheads and simple ornaments - most impressive is a superb set of Western Zhou and Shang bronze vessels covered in geometric designs suggestive of animal shapes, used for storing and cooking ritual food. A small upstairs section displays relics from the Han to the Northern Zhou; notable are the Han ceramic funerary objects, particularly the model houses.
Back on the lower floor, two side halls hold themed exhibitions, the western one of bronzes and ceramics, in which the best-looking artifacts are Tang. Large numbers of ceramic funerary objects include superbly expressive and rather vicious-looking camels, guardians, dancers, courtiers and warriors, glazed and unglazed. There’s even an ostrich and a rhinoceros, gifts from foreign ambassadors. The eastern hall holds a display of Tang gold and silver, mainly finely wrought images of dragons and tiny, delicate flowers and birds, and an exhibition of Tang costume and ornament. The hall’s introduction states that Tang women led “brisk and liberated lives”, though it’s hard to imagine how when you see the wigs arranged to show their complex, gravity-defying hair-dos, with names like “frightened swan coil”, and the tail, thin wood- en soles on their shoes.
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