Guanzhong Folk Art Museum

Located in Xi’an’s Chang’an District, the Guanzhong Folk Art Museum displays over 33,600 folk cultural relics, including ancient residences and stone carvings from various dynasties.

Planning your visit

The Guanzhong Folk Art Museum is a rescue operation on an unusual scale. Its founder spent decades buying and relocating traditional courtyard residences from across the Guanzhong plain around Xi'an as villages were demolished for redevelopment, dismantling them beam by beam and rebuilding them on a hillside site in Chang'an district. Around forty Ming and Qing houses now stand there, restored and furnished.

Alongside them is a collection of over 33,600 objects, and the standout is the hitching posts: some 8,600 carved stone posts, each topped with a lion, human figure or mythical beast, once set outside village houses. Massed together in rows, they are one of the more striking sights in Shaanxi and represent a folk sculpture tradition that had gone almost entirely unrecorded.

Local opera and shadow puppet performances are staged, and workshops cover intangible heritage crafts.

It sits at the foot of the Qinling mountains, around an hour from central Xi'an. Allow half a day. Bookable options combine the museum with local food tours. Current availability is listed below.