The Chongqing Natural History Museum stands in Beibei, on the northern side of the city about forty minutes from the centre, and it holds one of the more significant natural history collections in China. The museum grew out of collections assembled in the middle of the twentieth century from the Sichuan basin, and its strength is vertebrate palaeontology: the region's Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments have produced a large quantity of dinosaur material, and the museum's galleries display mounted skeletons, casts and original specimens from sites across the province and the surrounding region.
What is on display
The dinosaur halls are the centrepiece, with several large mounted skeletons and a variety of Chinese genera represented alongside better-known international forms; there are also displays on the great fossil beds of the Sichuan basin and on how the material is excavated and prepared. Beyond palaeontology, the museum covers the geology and mineralogy of the region, its present-day fauna and flora, including the giant panda and the other species of the south-western mountains, and the palaeolithic and neolithic archaeology of the area. There is a mineral gallery, a hall on the human body and a children's discovery area, and the building itself is modern with four storeys of galleries.
Beibei and the surrounds
Beibei is a district of hills, rivers and old hot springs on the western side of Chongqing, and it was a centre of wartime academia, with universities and research institutes relocated here in the 1930s and 1940s; several of those buildings survive. The area also holds the Jinyun mountain, a Taoist mountain with temples and forest trails, and the hot springs that have made the district a resort since the republican period. It is a part of Chongqing that most visitors never see, and it is much quieter than the centre.
Practical notes
The museum is open daily except Mondays, and admission is free with an identity document or a reservation, depending on the current system. It is reached by subway and then a bus or a short taxi ride, and the journey from central Chongqing takes around forty to sixty minutes, so allow half a day. Labels are largely in Chinese; a translation app makes the palaeontology galleries considerably more rewarding. Weekends are busy with families, and a weekday morning leaves the dinosaur halls almost empty.
