A Visit to the Xi'an Banpo Museum - China's First Museum of Pre-Historic Settlement Site

While in Xi'an , China, we visited a historical site known as the Xian Banpo Museum. In the spring of 1953, archaeoligists discovered a settlement site in Banpo Village on the bank of Chanhe River located in the eastern suburb of Xi'an. This was the Banpo site, a typical settlement made up of matriarchal clans living together in this area some thousand years ago.

The Banpo Museum houses "the relic from the Neolithic era, dating back approximately over 6,000 years, unveiling a rich cultural tapestry encompassing the social structure, production, economic systems, marital customs, traditions, and artistic culture of the Yangshao culture matrilineal community." Normally, I am not that interested in seeing broken pieces of clay pottery unearthed and displayed in museums. Since these broken pottery pieces all look the same to me, I never get too excited about them.

But this time some pieces of pottery in the Banpo Museum caught my eyes. I recently have learned a new and fast way of cooking - steaming. We have been enjoying good and nutritious food by using this easy and healthy way of cooking. But to my great surprise, we learned from the museum displays that eight pottery steamers were unearthed at the Banpo Site! This simple method of cooking had been used by the Banpo people living in the Guangzhong area between B.c. 4900 - 4300 year! While I pride myself of discovered steaming as a great way of cooking recently, the Banpo people had used it thousands of years ago. Amazing!

Since the Banpo Museum is a little out of the way from the busy streets of Xi'an, there were fewer visitors here than we had expected on the day of our visit. My husband was very excited about this place as he learned about it on the internet. Before we visited China, I had no idea that there are so many archelogical sites and ongoing projects taking place in this country. A visit to the Banpo Museum made me realize how long human kinds have been in existence on this earth and how small we are in man's history. RT Banpo Museum Xi'an, China 022025