Xinjiang Regional Museum

Xinjiang Regional Museum, situated in Xibei Road, Urumqi City, is a large comprehensive museum and center for collecting and studying the cultural relics of Xinjiang.

The museum, built in 1953, has an exhibition hall covering about 7,800 square meters. The construction here is in a Uygur style, and the internal decoration is rich in ethnic features. Over 50,000 items of treasure are displayed here, not only to represent the ethnic life and humanity here, but also to illustrate its revolutionary spirit. With such abundant items, the exhibition is widely known for its comprehensive and informative nature.

Xinjiang Regional Museum is split into 2 sections – one is devoted to archeological treasures from the Silk Road and the other showcases the province’s minority cultures.

The Silk Road exhibits have an array of tools, coins, jade, fabrics, pots and paintings all from the area. The most dramatic and interesting exhibits are the “Mummies of Urumqi” – ancient corpses preserved and found in the desert sands. The corpses include a baby who died around 3,800 years ago, still wrapped in swaddling as well as a couple who died at different periods but were found buried together. The most famous however, is the “Luolan Beauty”, a corpse of a woman believed to have died in her 40s and to be of Indo-European ethnicity. Discovered in 1980 in the riverbed of the Tieban in Loulan city, the corpse is believed to be around 4,000 years old. When found, she was still clutching a small purse and wore leather and fur sandals.

The minority cultures hall introduces tourists to the lifestyle and customs of 12 minority cultures including the Uygur, Kazakh, Russian, Mongol, Kyrgyz, Hui, Tajik, Tatar and Uzbek people. It has life-sized models of a Uygur house and different types of yurts (cloth tents used in the grasslands by the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Mongols). There are also household objects, handicrafts, hunting tools, musical instruments, and clothing on display.

Tips:

1. The museum accept 2000 people a day, five times with 400 people each. Ticket issuing time is 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 15:00, and 16:00 in summer and 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 15:00, and 16:00 in winter.
2. The site is closed on Monday (postponed when meeting a legal national holiday), on the New Year’s Eve, the first and second day of the lunar new year.
3. Close on the above-mentioned time, the Exhibition Room of the ancient corpses is also not open to the public on every Thursday and Sunday.

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