A trip through Dongguans' history: The Dongguan Exhibition Center.

---

A trip through Dongguans' history: The Dongguan Exhibition Center.

Greetings and Salutations my dear readers, and welcome back for another exciting installment of “The Traveler”. Today’s post is about the Dongguan Exhibition Center, located in the heart of Nancheng district in Dongguan. It is located on the corner of Hongfu road and Yuanmei road sitting beside the Central Square Park which will journey there in the next installment. The exhibition centre first opened to the public in 2004. The main aim of the exhibition centre is one of educational purposes, to enlighten those who walk through about local history, the economic development and city construction through the ages, as well about the culture unique to Dongguan. So please join me on my journey through the vast history of this wondrous place and I do hope you walk away knowing something new about not only the city but about China.

The three floors that inhabit the museum and the main topics that I will discuss here are as follows. We shall start on the first floor of the centre, local history. The local history spans many centuries, it was first settled during the Yuan dynasty, which at its height covered most of southern China and most of northern part of what is now Vietnam. Dongguan was first settled in the year of 331 BC and got its name in the year of 775BC. In Nanshi, an ancient village of Ming and Qing Dynasty, it has components of folk houses, temples, reading rooms, shops and ancient Chinese banyan. (It is a tree for indoor bonsai is the Chinese Banyan, scientific name is Ficus microcarpa. In the tropical foliage trade the same tree is called Ficus nitida or microcarpa. In this article I will refer to it as Ficus microcarpa or the Chinese banyan. The Chinese banyan is very widespread and found in landscapes and as a container tree in many countries of the world. It is used for boulevard trees in many cities including those of southern California.)


So the first part of the first floor dealt with this part of the local history.There was also photos of Liuhua Pagoda from the Ming Dynasty, which reflected the people’s intelligence of that time. As well as Jin'ao zhou, which was 1st built during the Ming Dynasty. The base of the pagoda is an octagonal shaped a 9 story 50 meter high pagoda. It stands as a landmark in ancient times with blue bricks and grey sands as the major construction materials. There was also Kangwant temples, from the Qing Dynasty. As we move further into the museum we find a vast area dedicated to the Opium wars of the late Qing Dynasty, which later lead to a revolt overthrowing the Dynasty as a whole and to the founding of modern China.

But that part is for a different entry my dear friends. After all, I am hear to write about what i have seen and felt, and this museum is a must see for those wishing to know about this history and for better understanding of a culture. But alas, I am getting off topic here.

As for the Exhibition centre, the opium war was with the foreign powers, mostly Britain and several other countries if my memory serves me right. But that is either here nor there for the moment.

The second floor of the museum concentrated on the city itself. The development of the city dating back to the prewar area. This floor is broken up into several different sections. As you can see through the photos, walking through the parts of the second floor seeing the design and layout of the city ranging from economic development to IT and so on and so forth basically the contribution from many different sections in the city that helped to improve and make the city bright and prosperous with a bright and exciting future. On the third floor is split into two sections the independent area, and the cultural history area. the cultural area on the third floor was very spacious and beautiful like most of the museum I saw. My suggestion that if you do come to Dongguan do come and see this place in Nancheng area of Dongguan.

---