China Guide
Yunnan
Kunming City Museum
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–5pm
Price: ¥15
Address: East of Beijing Lu along Tuodong Lu
The highlight of the Kunming City Museum, is the Dali Sutra Pillar. In its own room on the ground floor, it's a 6.5-metre-high, pagoda-like Song-dynasty sculpture, in pink sandstone; an octagonal base supports seven tiers covered in Buddha images, statues of fierce guardian gods standing on subjugated demons, and a mix of Tibetan and Chinese script, part of which is the Dharani Mantra. The rest is a dedication, identifying the pillar as having been raised by the Dali regent, Yuan Douguang, in memory of his general Gao Ming. The whole thing is topped by a ring of Buddhas carrying a ball – the universe – above them. Formerly part of the defunct Dizang temple, the pillar is a powerful work, full of the energy that later seeped out of the mainstream of Chinese sculpture.
The other exhibits are a well-presented repeat of Kunming's Provincial Museum collection. Enthusiasts for bronze drums can examine a range, from the oldest known example to relatively recent castings, to see how the typical decorations – sun and frog designs on top, long-plumed warriors in boats around the sides, tiger handles – became so stylized. There are cowrie-drum lids, too, and a host of other bronze pieces worth examining for nit-picking details of birds, animals and people. Other rooms contain two excellent dioramas of modern and Ming-dynasty Kunming, accounts (in Chinese) of the voyages of Zheng He, the famous Ming eunuch admiral, and five locally found fossilized dinosaur skeletons – including a tyrannosaurus-like allosaur, and the bulky Yunnanosaurusrobustus.