In 1852, the prefect of Qujing, Deng Erheng, noticed strange, blocky characters pressed into the skin of his morning tofu. He traced the markings back to a local farmer, who had hauled a heavy slab of green sandstone from a field in 1778 to use as a simple kitchen weight. That stone was the Cuan Baozi Stele, carved in 405 CE. Today, it stands inside the Cuan Culture Museum, located on the campus of Qujing No. 1 Middle School at No. 21 Wenchang Street.

The museum grounds, known as the Cuan Garden, occupy a two-mu protective zone established in 1961. Visitors enter a space where the modern main building, shaped like an open book in white, gray, and red, meets a traditional courtyard. Here, the scent of ancient pines and cypresses fills the air. Red walls, glazed roof tiles, and painted beams frame the central courtyard, where stone basins carved with auspicious beasts catch the mountain light.

At the heart of the garden, two stone monuments stand face-to-face. Inside the closed, four-walled Cuan Stele Pavilion, behind protective glass, rests the Cuan Baozi Stele. It measures 1.83 meters high, 0.68 meters wide, and 0.21 meters thick. Its gold-gilt seal script plaque, written by the scholar Yuan Jiagu, hangs above the entrance. The stone preserves 403 characters written in a transitional style between clerical and regular script, with sharp, knife-cut strokes that influenced artists like Li Shutong.

Opposite stands the open-air Alliance Stele Pavilion, housing the Duan's and Thirty-seven Tribes Alliance Stele. Erected in 971 CE, this smaller monument—1.25 meters high and 0.16 meters thick—records a political treaty unmentioned in any surviving historical text.

The museum began in 1937 when the school's founder, Xie Xianlin, built a single pavilion to protect these stones. Today, the surrounding corridors display rubbings and transcription texts. Visitors can touch the cold stone basins, look at the sharp angles of the ancient calligraphy, and feel the weight of a five-hundred-year regional dynasty preserved in a quiet schoolyard.