Liaoyang Museum

At No. 2 Center Road in Liaoyang’s Baita District, the ground holds the memory of Northeast China’s oldest city. The Liaoyang Museum spans thirty thousand square meters, bridging two eras through its architecture. To the east lies the Peng Mansion, a three-entry courtyard built in 1921 by banker Peng Xian for his wife. Its brick-and-wood structures, built in the classic hard-gable style, feature symmetrical side-rooms and interconnected corridors that once echoed with the footsteps of the Republican elite. Director Wong Kar-wai later used these silent, shadow-draped courtyards to film the movie The Grandmaster.

To the west, the modern museum building, completed in 2009, rises with a double-eaved hip roof. Visitors ascend an eighteen-step grand staircase to a wide platform. Eight reddish-brown columns support the roof, while cool white marble balustrades frame the corridors. To maintain harmony with the historic mansion, builders laid gray bricks and tiles sourced from local historical kilns, their rough surfaces carrying the earthy scent of regional clay.

Inside, the museum preserves over six thousand sets of relics. The galleries display the Han and Wei dynasty tomb murals, where painted chariots and banquets remain frozen on stone slabs. Among the treasures is a Warring States jade disc carved with swirl patterns, and a Goryeo celadon pillow inlaid with chrysanthemums. A rare eleven-centimeter-tall Liao Dynasty white-glazed ewer shows delicate relief carvings of peonies and butterflies, its smooth glaze catching the gallery light.

Human devotion shapes the collection. In 1796, one hundred and twenty-five scholars and officials, including Liu Yong and Ji Xiaolan, gifted the scholar Wang Erlie a massive nine-panel screen for his seventieth birthday. It contains one hundred and twenty-six calligraphic works and paintings, including Ji Xiaolan’s rare water-color crane. Centuries later, in 2008, eighty-eight-year-old local artist Li Zanzhou donated his fifty-eight-meter-long scroll, Fragrance of Lotus for Ten Thousand Li, refusing lucrative private offers to ensure his life's work remained in his hometown. Today, the museum stands as a physical dialogue between the ancient and the immediate, where the dust of two millennia settles on quiet stone.