The new Minhang Museum opened to the public on Thursday.

The museum is a three-story, A-shaped building in Minhang Culture Park on Xinzhen Road which covers 15,000 square meters. It is open 9am to 4pm every day except Mondays, with free admission. 

Featuring three themed exhibitions, the museum tells the history of the district with artifacts, multimedia displays and literature reviews.

A Maqiao Cultural Exhibition showcases some 150 artifacts excavated from Yutang Village in Maqiao Town. The artifacts, including porcelain and farm tools, date back over 3,900 years. Archeologists said the terrain at the time was vastly different from now, people then lived by the sea.

The artifacts will give the visitors a glimpse of how people farmed, hunted as well as the beginnings of their art and culture.

Another exhibition at the museum, “Shanghai County 700 Years Exhibition,” takes the visitors on a journey covering a span of 700 years. Over 300 artifacts show how Shanghai grew to a metropolis from a fishing village by the sea.

The museum also has a section for ancient Chinese musical instruments.

Apart from the regular exhibitions, the museum also has a temporary “The Maritime Silk Road of the Han Dynasty” exhibition which will run to February 13 next year. It showcases 128 artifacts including jewels, exotic tools and money excavated from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in south China. Most were commodities imported from other countries or goods ready to be sold abroad.

While the museum welcomed its first guests, the Minhang Culture Park also had some special visitors, a group of 70 autistic children.

The children gathered at at the plaza outside the museum to attend a painting gala. Instead of drawing on paper, they were asked to use their imagination to color 70 dragon-horse statues. Dragon-horses are a creature in Chinese mythology that represent health.

Most of the children have severe autistic symptoms and have to be guided by volunteers. But when they picked up brushes, they grinned as they splashed bright colors on the statues.

“It is good for them to attend such public events and interact with others,” said Ouyang Dongqing, organizer of the event and the a parent of an autistic child. “It will also raise more public awareness on autism.”