Liuzhou Bailiandong Cave Science Museum 柳州白莲洞洞穴科学博物馆

About Liuzhou Bailiandong Cave Science Museum

In 1956, led by Chinese palaeoanthropologists Pei Wenzhong and Jia Lanpo, the South China field team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology discovered the Bailiandong ancient-human site. Excavations there yielded more than 500 stone tools, two human tooth fossils, more than 3,500 animal bone fossils and two traces of human fire use. Pei Wenzhong, founder of Chinese Palaeolithic archaeology and discoverer of the first Peking Man skull, inscribed for Bailiandong the words "in the north, Shandingdong; in the south, Bailiandong", and separately remarked that China could become the world centre of palaeoanthropological research, with Guangxi as the centre of that centre. The site is a national key cultural relic protection unit.

The museum was established in 1985 and its grounds cover 135,000 square metres, including the protected site itself, the cave's geological landscape, an exhibition building, a visitor centre and the Bailian Inscription Garden. Liuzhou's municipal party committee and government listed the museum among the city's Ten Major Cultural Construction Projects in 2009, and construction of a new exhibition building, which the district tourism bureau's account calls Guangxi's first example of fair-faced concrete construction, began in 2015, and it opened on 29 September 2019. It presents two exhibitions, "Tales of Earth: Biological Evolution" and "Cave Home: Liuzhou Prehistoric Culture", displaying more than 2,000 items, mostly prehistoric relics and fossils, tracing the origin of life, human evolution and the evolution of Liuzhou's prehistoric culture.

What to look for

• The Bailiandong site itself, a national key cultural relic protection unit.
• The cave's geological landscape, named among the components of the museum grounds.
• The "Tales of Earth: Biological Evolution" exhibition hall.
• The "Cave Home: Liuzhou Prehistoric Culture" exhibition hall.
• The more than 2,000 items shown across the two exhibitions, mostly prehistoric relics and fossils.

Location & getting there

Getting to Liuzhou Bailiandong Cave Science Museum

Confirm the venue or campus, reservation channel and exhibition calendar. A museum name may cover more than one building.

• Search for 柳州白莲洞洞穴科学博物馆 with 柳州市 and 鱼峰区.