The Jingzhou Museum is one of the outstanding regional museums in central China, and the reason alone to stop in the city. The building houses artifacts from over eight hundred ancient tombs excavated across the Jingzhou area — an extraordinary density of finds that reflects the region's role as capital of the Chu state for nearly four centuries during the Warring States period.
The collection's twin highlights are the silk garments and the preserved corpse. The silk textiles from the Warring States period are woven with a technical sophistication — figures, patterns, and geometric designs in threads so fine they barely register to the touch — that continues to astonish textile historians. The Han dynasty corpse, male, middle-aged, and recovered intact from a sealed lacquered coffin, is displayed in a purpose-built chamber with the kind of matter-of-fact interpretive tone that Chinese museums generally do well. The lacquerware collection, in near-perfect condition after two thousand years, shows the Chu aesthetic at its most refined: black and red, spare and elegant, as modern-looking as anything produced in the twentieth century.
Admission is free. The museum is in the historic district just inside the city walls. Allow two to three hours.