Established in 1984, the Tongcheng City Museum is located within the Tongcheng Confucius Temple, a key cultural relics protection unit in Anhui Province, covering an area of approximately 7,000 square meters. The museum houses over 4,000 exquisite cultural relics, including a Spring and Autumn period animal-eared zun, a Warring States bronze ge, a Han Dynasty bronze zhong, a Western Jin tiger-shaped vessel, a Six Dynasties lotus society zun, a Tang Dynasty bronze mirror, a Song Dynasty Longquan wash, a Yuan Dynasty porcelain censer, and a Ming Dynasty winter melon jar, among others.
The museum features four main exhibition halls: the ‘Fine Cultural Relics Hall’ displays the museum’s finest collections, including bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy, and miscellaneous items; the ‘Tongcheng School Cultural Relics Exhibition Hall’ showcases the inception, prosperity, and decline of the Tongcheng prose school and its important representative figures; the ‘Dacheng Hall Clay Color Sculpture Exhibition’ displays clay color sculptures of Confucius and his disciples, as well as imperial plaques and couplets from the Qing Dynasty; the ‘Yan Fengying Artistic Career Exhibition’ is divided into four parts: ‘Art’, ‘Rebirth’, ‘Brilliance’, and ‘Legacy’, showcasing the theme ‘Huangmei Opera created Yan Fengying, Yan Fengying developed Huangmei Opera’.
Among the precious collections are:
– Animal-eared Bronze Zun with Animal-Face Belt Pattern from the Spring and Autumn period. Circular in shape, with a flared mouth, straight neck, sloping shoulders, converging belly, and ring foot. The mouth diameter is 22 cm, and the height is 41 cm. Each shoulder features an animal head. The shoulders and belly are decorated with transformed animal-face belt patterns.
– Longquan Kiln Wash from the Southern Song Dynasty. It is a standard piece from the Southern Song Longquan kiln. It stands at 3.9 cm tall, with a flared mouth, thick lips, straight and sloping belly, and a short ring foot, showing the bare clay body. The entire piece is unadorned, coated with a mung bean green glaze, smooth and lustrous like jade.
