Mount Songshan

Mount Songshan, one of the Five Sacred Mountains of China, is of great historical and cultural significance. It was long being an important venue for the ancient Chinese emperors, kings and ministers to hold grand ceremony of worship of heaven to pray and say thanks for peace and prosperity. Also, poets, men of letters came here to propagate doctrines of the ancient sages; princes, dukes, ministers came here to deliver a sermon; Chinese and foreign tourists have been coming to admire the wonderful views.

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty visited Songshan in the year of 110 BC and gave an order to the 300 families to make up of the Songgao county; in the year of 682 AD, emperor Tanggaozong ordered to build Fengtian Palace on the south of Songshan in order to visit the Songshan often. And then he ordered to set up Songyang county. In 696 AD, Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty climbed onto the ridge of Taishi to do homage to heaven, and did homage to the earth on the top of Shaoshi. She changed the name of Songyang county to Dengfeng county, which in Chinese means "climbing and paying homage"; and changed Yangcheng County to Gaocheng County, which in Chinese means "succeed".

Since the reform and open policy, the Songshan scenery spot has greatly been improved. Eight scenery spots have formed here, including the Shaolin Temple, the Songyang Academy, Taishi Mount, the Fawang Temple, the Zhongyue Temple, Luya waterfall, the star observation platform, and the Shaoshi Mount.

In recent years, there are many new tour activities, such as, mountaineering, Wushu, archaeological studies, religion tour, astronomy tour, geological tour, forest tour, and customs tour, forming a comprehensive tourist system and the Songshan scenery spot has become a good place for sightseeing, mountaineering, adventure, research and recreation.

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Henan National Museum

Henan Museum, built in 1927, is one of the oldest and largest museums in China. Its site changed for several times and finally lies at Nongye Road, Jinshui district, Zhengzhou, Henan. It is a history and art museum with a collection of more than 130,000 pieces of cultural relics through the ages, of which more than 5,000 pieces are treasures of the first and second grades. They are rich in contents, presenting a spectacular sight to visitors.

Henan Museum was once called Henan Provincial Museum and gained the present name at 1997. It occupies an area of more than 100,000 square meters, with a total floor space of 78,000 square meters. The main exhibition hall is located at the center in the shape of an enormous pyramid. Behind it is a storeroom for culture relics, around it there are the electrified education building, combined service building, office building and training building. The constructed museum sight is grandiose and precise, displaying primitive simplicity and elegance. It features the artistic style and culture of central China.

The exhibition halls of the museum mainly consist of three parts, namely basic exhibition halls, specialized exhibition halls and provisional exhibition halls. The basic exhibition halls display the historical and cultural relics discovered throughout Henan Province during the period from prehistory to Ming and Qing Dynasty. It presents that Henan is the cradle of China’s civilization. The special exhibition halls feature special exhibitions of bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and pottery and porcelain wares of the various dynasties in Chinese history possess most distinguishing features, stone carvings and treasures of Ming and Qing dynasties. The museum also organizes regular exchange programs with foreign and domestic museums and some wonderful temporary exhibits make their way here.

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