Discover Chengdu
Anren Ancient Town & Jianchuan Museum Cluster
安仁古镇・建川博物馆聚落
A Republican-era town of 1930s manor houses and arcaded streets, next to China's largest privately founded museum complex - more than twenty pavilions on the war against Japan, the earthquake of 2008 and everyday twentieth-century life. Unusually frank for a Chinese museum, and almost no foreign visitors.
The story
What makes this place special
Anren, in Dayi County about an hour and a half west of Chengdu, was a landlord town: it has an old street of Republican-era mansions built by local magnates, and the Liu family estate, which was turned into a museum in October 1958 as the 'Dayi Landlord Manor Exhibition Hall' - over 70,000 square metres with some 545 rooms, a mix of traditional brick-and-timber construction with borrowings from Western castles and churches. The Jianchuan Museum Cluster next to it is something quite different: a private museum complex founded by the businessman Fan Jianchuan on over 500 mu, now the largest privately funded museum operation in China, built around the war against Japan, the Mao era and the Cultural Revolution, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and Sichuan folk life. Reported counts of its separate halls range from twenty-odd to over fifty with a claimed collection in the millions of items.
What you’ll discover
Three things in one place. The Liu estate is a huge walled landlord compound of courtyards, halls, grain stores and a family temple, presented as an exhibition of rural class structure - the original 1950s framing is still partly visible, which is itself historically interesting. The Jianchuan cluster is a modern campus of separate pavilions by different architects, each a museum: the war halls with aircraft and weapons, a hall of the 'red era' full of Mao-period material culture, an earthquake hall built from the debris of 2008, and folk-life collections. The old street of Anren itself - Shuren, Yumin and Hongxing streets, about 760 metres in all - is lined with Republican merchant mansions.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- This is a full day from Chengdu, not a half day, and the cluster alone can absorb four hours. Decide in advance which halls you want; attempting all of them is how people end up seeing nothing properly.
- The Cultural Revolution and Mao-era halls are the reason specialists come, because material of that period is rarely displayed anywhere in China - and the holdings here exist precisely because they are in private hands.
- The earthquake museum is harrowing and is built partly from wreckage and the possessions of the dead. Decide whether you want that before you walk in, especially with children.
- The Liu estate and the cluster are separately ticketed and a short walk apart; many visitors do one and never realise the other is there.
- Stay overnight in Anren if you can. The old street in the evening, once the coaches have gone, is one of the pleasantest small-town evenings near Chengdu, and it is a different place from the daytime.
When to come
A full weekday, starting early. Spring and autumn for walking between the pavilions; the cluster is largely open-air circulation between indoor halls, so summer heat and heavy rain both make it harder.
Getting around
Mostly good at the cluster, poor at the estate. The Jianchuan pavilions are modern buildings with level or ramped entrances and lifts where there are upper floors, and the campus paths between them are paved and flat, so a wheelchair user can do a real visit - the constraint is the very large distances. The Liu estate is a Republican-era compound with raised sills, courtyard level changes, narrow passages and stairs to upper floors, and is hard in a wheelchair. The old street is flat paving.
Worth knowing before you go
The museum cluster is genuinely large - allow at least three hours and pick three or four pavilions rather than trying to see them all. The Liu Family Manor in the town itself is ticketed separately.
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