Military Museum, Beijing

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In July 2010, I had the opportunity to spend some time (but not nearly enough) in the Chinese national military museum. It was happily free of foreign tourists but was packed with Chinese tourists. I'll post some images to give you a taste of this nice museum.

Sadly, the hall with the exhibits on the Anti-American War in Korea seemed to be closed. Apparently, it was shut down diplomatically at the time of the Olympics. Also closed was the separate museum on Tian'anmen Square that will meld together the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, once it has had an ideological bath.

The Military Museum is located at 9 Fuxing Lu, Haidan, Beijing, is open 0800-1700 daily, and has its very own subway stop, helpfully named Military Museum.

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Inside, once welcomed by The Great Helmsman, there are separate halls for the various phases of the revolution (there are also halls on earlier periods, but in the interest of time and, frankly, interest, I gave them a pass).

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If your interests, like mine, focus on medals, there is much to enchant. Especially interesting are the early early awards which you'll never see "in the flesh" outside a collection like this.

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Uniform folks won't be disappointed either.

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And the flag people will be entertained too.

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And, for those who like hardware, there's a nice selection. There's also a big section of weapons, firearms, swords, etc. and you can see it peeking out at the left of the first photo and right of the second one.

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There is also an opportunity to spend money -- this is, after all, new modern capitalist People's China -- there is the gift shop. They had (once they found the right key) a nice enough set of replicas (that would fool no one over the age of four) of the first class badges of the three 1955 orders.

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A few more general shots. It was a great visit and I urge anyone who is Beijing to go there. Entry is a modest 20 yuan, as I recall, and you won't spend a better 20.

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There were a few exotic and surprising exhibits. No Soviet awards (there wouldn't have been any during this period once the Comintern folks felt rejected and went home), but one US award.

To balance this, there was also ideological inspiration.

[DougD]

Great photos, thanks for posting!