The Nantong Museum, founded in 1905 by the reformer and industrialist Zhang Jian, is one of China's earliest purpose-built public museums and a monument to the late Qing reform movement's faith in education as a tool of national renewal. The collections are genuinely eclectic — whale skeletons, fine ceramics, calligraphy scrolls, natural history specimens, industrial exhibits — and the grounds include pleasant gardens designed in the classical Chinese style that provide a context for the buildings.
Zhang Jian is the most important historical figure associated with Nantong: a scholar-turned-entrepreneur who built the city's textile industry, founded its university, and created a range of cultural institutions that were extraordinarily progressive for their era. The museum is part of a cluster of his legacy projects that give Nantong an unexpected depth of civic culture relative to its size. The collection includes a Textile Museum as a separate building on the grounds, covering Nantong's industrial textile traditions across six well-curated halls.