Discover Shenzhen
Shenzhen Museum (History and Folk Culture Hall)
深圳博物馆历史民俗馆
The clearest account anywhere of how a cluster of fishing and farming villages became a city of 17 million in forty years, told with documents, models and reconstructed shopfronts. Free and genuinely useful context for everything else you see here.
The story
What makes this place special
Shenzhen Museum was founded in 1981, the year after the Special Economic Zone was created, and now runs several buildings; the oldest, on Tongxin Road, opened in November 1988. The History and Folk Culture Hall, in Block A of the Civic Center on Futian's central axis, opened in December 2008 with around 10,000 square metres of exhibition space. Its job is unusual among Chinese city museums: it has to argue that Shenzhen had a history before 1980, and then narrate the forty years that made it a city of millions.
What you’ll discover
Permanent galleries on the second and third floors: Ancient Shenzhen, Modern Shenzhen, Shenzhen's Reform and Opening, and Shenzhen Folk Customs. The modern-history section runs about 1,300 square metres with over 300 objects, split into 'A Century of Resistance' and 'Economy and Society', covering the 110 years from the Kowloon naval battle of 1839 to 1949. The folk gallery has more than 800 objects of daily and working life from the Cantonese, Hakka and coastal fishing communities, with reconstructed street scenes, a village school and a wedding, using waxworks and projection. The reform-era gallery is the one visitors actually come for.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Go for the reform-and-opening gallery and the folk gallery. The ancient section is thin by necessity; the 1980s material — the original border permits, the first stock certificates, the photographs of Shenzhen as a market town — is the only place in the city where that story is told with objects.
- The folk gallery is the counter-argument to 'Shenzhen has no history'. The Hakka and fishing-village material is from exactly the places that the city was built on top of.
- It is in the Civic Center on metro Line 4 at Civic Center station, under the same roof complex as the city library and across from MOCAPE — three serious indoor stops within ten minutes' walk, which makes this the right plan for a wet day.
- Free and, at the time of writing, without advance booking, but closed Mondays and stopping admission half an hour before closing — do not arrive late in the afternoon.
- English labelling is present but abbreviated; the detail is in the Chinese captions, so a translation app earns its keep here more than at most museums.
When to come
A weekday morning, or any hot or rainy day. Closed Mondays.
Getting around
Very good. Purpose-built modern building with step-free access from the Civic Center plaza and metro, lifts to all gallery floors, level wide galleries, seating and accessible toilets. No part of the permanent displays requires stairs.
Worth knowing before you go
The reform-era section on the top floor is the reason to come; skip the ancient-history floor if time is short.
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