Xinjiang Museum

The Xinjiang Museum is one of the most genuinely surprising museums in China, and it deserves several hours. The headline attraction is the collection of mummies recovered from the Tarim Basin — ancient people preserved by the extreme aridity of the Taklamakan Desert, some dating back nearly 4,000 years. They are remarkably intact: hair colour visible, facial features preserved, clothing still in place. The "Beauty of Loulan" and the "Cherchen Man" are the most famous, and they are displayed with care and proper archaeological context.

Beyond the mummies, the collection covers the full sweep of Xinjiang's history: Han dynasty military equipment left at desert garrison outposts, Buddhist manuscripts and paintings from the cave complexes along the Silk Road, Uyghur folk costumes, Kazakh jewellery, and a substantial collection of prehistoric artefacts. The museum is large and the signage is in Chinese and English. Come early if you want the mummy hall to yourself.

things to do museum
A story
The museum's most famous exhibit is the "Beauty of Loulan," a 3,800-year-old woman recovered from the Tarim Basin whose DNA has shown her to be genetically related to people from the Pontic Steppe — the grasslands north of the Black Sea. She is not alone: dozens of mummies from the same desert cemeteries carry genetic markers pointing to Bronze Age migrations across an enormous span of Eurasia, suggesting that the Silk Road was being walked — or ridden — far earlier and far more widely than historians once imagined.

Other places in Things to Do