Northwest Five Provinces (Regions) Autumn Self-driving Tour (60): Visit to Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum

On October 13, 2023, at 10:50 am, we arrived at the Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum in Haidong City. The Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum in Qinghai, located near the Liuwan site in Liuwan Village, Ledu District, Haidong City, Qinghai Province, covers a total area of 5830 square meters, with an exhibition hall area of 1500 square meters. It is a social science archaeology themed museum and also the largest museum in China that mainly displays painted pottery culture. The collections in the museum are divided into pottery, bone tools, stone tools, jade articles, and decorations. Most of the collections in the Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum in Qinghai were unearthed from the Liuwan Cemetery in Qinghai. The painted pottery unearthed is famous for its shape, decoration, and composition in Chinese painted pottery culture. Painted pottery accounts for half of the collections in the museum, and the number of painted pottery relics in the museum is second to none in China. According to the China Museum Yearbook, there are nearly 17,000 pieces of pottery, 932 pieces of stone tools, 76 pieces of bone tools, 18,246 pieces of decorations, and 1,366 other pieces in the Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum in Qinghai. As of the end of 2019, the number of collections in the museum reached 38,648 pieces/sets, with 267 pieces/sets of precious cultural relics. The painted pottery relics mainly include four types of ancient cultural types such as the semi-mountain type and the horse factory type of the Majiayao culture in the late Neolithic period more than 5700 years ago, and the Qijia culture and the Xindian culture, such as the naked human figure painted pottery pot, painted pottery boots, human head painted pottery pot, handle pot, frog pattern painted pottery pot, owl face pot and bone knives, forks, spoons and a large number of polished stone tools of the Neolithic Age, reflecting the unprecedented prosperity of painted pottery art in the plateau area from the late Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age. In September 2018, the Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum in Qinghai was designated as a national second-level museum. In May 2020, the Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum in Qinghai was selected as the 'Top Ten Boutique' award list of the '17th (2019) National Museum Top Ten Exhibition Boutique Promotion Activity', and the 'River Source Human Prehistoric Civilization - Qinghai Liuwan Painted Pottery Exhibition' promoted by the museum won the Excellence Award. This museum should not have many people usually. When we entered the exhibition hall, the security guard also took a few photos of us visiting the exhibition hall. We didn't understand the painted pottery, so we just took a quick look. But Xiaomengmeng was very interested in these painted pottery and the production process. She asked her mother to take her around several times and still reluctantly left. Until we arrived in Yuncheng, she still asked her mother when we would go to see that painted pottery again. At 11:20 am, we left the Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum, returned to Minhe County along the original road, turned into the G6 Beijing-Tibet Expressway, and drove to Lanzhou.