The National Museum of Chinese Writing traces the evolution of Chinese characters from the earliest oracle bone inscriptions through bamboo slips, silk manuscripts, paper scrolls, printed books, and digital type — roughly three thousand years of a script that has remained recognisable across all those transformations. The collection is extensive and well displayed, with particular strength in the Shang and Zhou periods when the character forms were still visibly pictographic and the link between a character's shape and its meaning was often self-evident.
The interactive sections are among the best of any museum in Henan. Visitors can try their hand at the divination process, learn the basic stroke sequences for ancient characters, and follow the branching family trees that show how a single Shang pictograph became the simplified and traditional variants used in modern Chinese and Japanese. The museum pairs well with a visit to Yinxu — come here first to build context, then walk the excavation site with a better sense of what the inscribed bones actually meant to the people who made them. Opening hours are typically 9am to 5pm; entry is free.