Anhui Museum

The Anhui Museum in Hefei, the provincial capital, is housed in a spectacular new building over seven floors, displaying superb collections of ancient bronzes, pottery, porcelain, jade, coins, paintings and fossils, and natural history specimens. Nearby Huanshang Mountain, one of the five great mountains of China, was the centre of Huizhou culture, with its own architecture, commerce, neo-Confucianism and opera and cuisine. The museum has moved wonderful examples of this Hui-style building from the Tunxi area of the mountain and reconstructed within the museum the monumental arches, houses, courtyards and gardens. There is an exhibition of the Four Treasures of the Scholar's Study with high-quality ink sticks, heavy carved ink stones, weaselhair brushes and multicoloured papers. There are also paintings by Pan Yuliang (1899-1977), the first Chinese female painter to work in the western style.