There are many ways to understand Guangzhou, from its towering skyscrapers and busy malls to its lively parks and markets crowded with people and goods. But to see how the city has taken shape and become an economic powerhouse, you’ll want to explore its history, its evolution through art, craft, and trade. I found the best way to do that was through five of the best museums in Guangzhou, each of which introduces you to the city in different ways.

Many museum labels — but far from all — are in English. Have a camera and translation app at the ready (the built-in iPhone Camera Translate App served me well). If you want to know more about visiting Guangzhou with only English, I’ve written more here, and I’ve also written about traveling as a solo woman in the city.

The Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King

Its lengthy name aside, this museum was my favorite of them all. It features the tomb of Zhao Mo, who ruled the ancient Kingdom of Nanyue from 137 BC to 122 BC, and all of the artifacts found therein.

Buried in a suit of 2,291 jade pieces sewn together with red thread, Zhao Mo holds center stage. Jade disks surrounded and covered the king’s body, all meant to protect him eternally. He even owned a cup for collecting sweet dew — which, when mixed with jade dust, was said to ensure immortality.

Jade was both a preserver of the soul and a status symbol. So you’ll find plenty of it — alongside other markers of prosperity, including early glass and spectacular bronze carvings — as you move through the museum.

We learn here that wealth has existed for millennia in Guangzhou, once considered a far-flung vassal of the mighty Han Empire to the north.

Planning for the Afterlife in Nanyue

As with the pharaohs of old, Nanyue cosmology involved planning for an afterlife with everything one might need. So in addition to burying himself with riches, the king had attendants, guards, cooks, and concubines killed and buried with him. Archaeologists found the bones of these individuals lying alongside farming equipment, naval remnants, weaponry, musical instruments …

… and even cooking implements, all the way down to a ginger shredder.

All of this offers a tantalizing glimpse into life in southern China over 2,000 years ago, which makes for a fascinating start to a Guangzhou journey.

The museum also dedicates half a floor to “The Exhibition of Ceramic Pillows Donated by Yeung Wing Tak Couple.” If you’re excited about hard, beautifully-decorated, traditional Chinese pillows (I was), you’ll enjoy this seemingly random addition.

Visit Tips for the Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King (the Nanyue King Museum)

• Hours: Check the official website
• How Long to Spend: 1-2 hours
• Tickets: Museum entrance is free, but you do need to book a slot in advance through WeChat (I found the booking process challenging as a non-Chinese speaker). There is a fee to visit the tomb itself.
• Managing With Only English: Most of the signage, plus the helpful video, includes English translations. But I definitely found myself pulling out my phone to identify some of the objects.

Zhenhai Tower

This museum picks up where the Nanyue King Museum leaves off, tracing Guangzhou’s history through artifacts from the Western Han dynasty all the way up to the 1970s. It was also my greatest surprise — I thought I was going to see a giant five-story Ming dynasty pavilion in Yuexiu Park, and I found myself in a small museum instead.

With each floor of the tower, you progress chronologically. The visit begins with figures and model houses from the Western and Eastern Han. These pieces give modern viewers a real sense of how people might have lived, providing us with images of wells, ovens, animal pens, and dancing figures.

As you walk upstairs, you stroll through the ages, passing by ceramics from the Jin and the Ming dynasties …

… until you reach the floor with trade goods made for export markets during the Qing dynasty and Republic of China period.

This is a great place to stop and admire the ways in which China opened to global commerce in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, allowing it to share its fine craftsmanship with the world.

A smaller building outside holds a range of objects, including some from the second half of the twentieth century, and it was fun to hear older visitors pass by and make knowing sounds of recognition.

Unfortunately, the pieces in this outbuilding either only had labels in Chinese or had no signage at all, so I was often left to wonder what I was seeing.

Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my trip through the museum spaces at Zhenhai Tower. If you want the most complete overview of Guangzhou — breadth rather than depth — then this is your place to start.

Visit Tips for Zhenhai Tower

• Hours: Daily, 9:00-5:00
• How Long to Spend: 30 minutes–1 hour
• Tickets: There is a small fee, which you can pay at the entrance. I found the ticket machines impossibly hard to use; you’ll be better served paying cash at the window.
• Accessibility: You have to climb multiple flights of stairs to see the museum in the pavilion; there is no elevator.
• Managing With Only English: The pieces in the main tower are well labeled in both Chinese and English; those in the second, smaller building are not.

Guangzhou Thirteen Hongs Museum

This museum brings us to the commercial enterprises that made Guangzhou — once known as Canton — famous as a center of world trade. My visit here gave me context for understanding the city’s modern rise to prominence.

The focus of this museum is the Thirteen Hongs, or factories, that housed Western traders and their wares. Canton was one of the only places where western powers were allowed to trade in China between the late 1600s and 1842, so it became a wildly busy port area with ships from far and wide.

Hundreds of different kinds of ships plied the waters, including black barges, “boats of transporting field-manure,” “going to four directions boats,” rice selling boats, salt cargo boats, duck boats, “boats of transporting horse fodder,” shoe boats, boats “for the middle of the seventh month,” and watermelon boats.

You’ll find plenty of information about the history of the port and the goods these ships carried.

Commerce & Craftsmanship

The stars of the show at the Thirteen Hongs Museum are the many examples of the products shipped to worldwide markets. You can see Chinese workmanship at its best here, shining in silks, enamelware, ceramics, and more.

My favorite items of all had to be the silk fans, which combined the skills of fine painting, delicate embroidery, and elaborately-carved sticks.

The museum also takes you through the darker days of Canton: the Opium Wars, when British and later French naval powers forced China to legalize opium. It’s sobering to reach this last gallery and reflect on the long-lasting damage that these conflicts inflicted on the Chinese government and its people.

You’ll definitely want to visit this museum if you want to get a greater understanding of Guangzhou’s maritime trade history and flourishing Chinese artistry. Plus, if you’ve strolled through nearby Shamian Island and wondered about its unmistakably European architecture, this museum will have plenty of answers.

Visit Tips for the Thirteen Hongs Museum

• Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 9:00-5:00. Closed Mondays.
• How Long to Spend: 45 minutes–1 hour
• Tickets: The museum is free and does not require advanced booking
• Managing With Only English: Everything is offered with excellent English translations (except for the official website, which is only in Chinese)

Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and Guangdong Folk Art Museum

Now we’ve reached an architectural wonder of the late 19th century. With ornate stone carvings, magnificent rooftop beasts, and decorative wood paneling, the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is worth a visit in its own right. And it also houses the Guangdong Folk Art Museum, so you get two immersive experiences into art and history for the price of one.

For starters, you’ll want to wander around looking at the building itself, from its wide courtyards to long hallways and sky-high rooms.

Then it’s time to look more closely at the walls, windows, and wooden screens.

Don’t forget to look up — some of the very best carvings and creatures crawl along the roofline.

Exploring the Folk Art Museum

Scattered throughout the halls are examples of traditional crafts from across the Guangdong region. You’ll need to push your way through the crowds to see many of the items — the ancestral hall is a popular place, even on weekday afternoons.

Many of the pieces on display here are fairly recent by Guangzhou museum standards, some from the twenty-first century. You’ll see media that may be familiar by now, such as textiles, ceramics, and shell carving …

… but there were also art forms I’d never seen before, including olive stone carving, porcelain overlay sculpture, and elaborate seashell art.

What I liked most about the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is that everything, from the soaring roof beams to the pieces of folk art, speaks to the region’s artisans and their skills. It feels like a museum in a museum.

That said, this wasn’t my favorite visit experience. The hall can be so crowded that it becomes difficult to actually see anything — just when you think you’ve found space, someone steps in front to take a picture. And the museum definitely takes a back seat to the ancestral hall. I would have preferred to have seen the folk art in a place where it could shine all on its own.

Visit Tips for the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and Guangdong Folk Art Museum

• Hours: Daily, 9:00-5:00; summer evening hours extend later
• How Long to Spend: 1¼–2 hours
• Tickets: There is a small fee, and you need to book using WeChat (this process was so difficult that I had to ask an English-speaking museum official for help)
• Managing With Only English: Most of the folk art museum pieces have English translations. There’s limited information about the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall itself in English, so if you want to learn as much as possible, you’ll need to hire a guide.

Liwan Museum

Visiting a collection dedicated to a single district in Guangzhou might not be on your radar, but I highly recommend the Liwan Museum. This was the sleeper hit of my trip, both informative and intimate.

The Liwan Museum sprawls out over four historic homes, each unique in its architecture and layout.

Be prepared for a somewhat hodgepodge collection of objects and ideas — it’s up to you to make sense of it all. But in some ways, you’ll get a more complete picture of Chinese art and history here than at any of the other museums.

You’ll likely start in the 1920s yellow villa, known for its wide balconies and fabulous five-story spiral staircase.

Downstairs, the collection focuses on Qing Dynasty objects made for the western export market, all clearly labeled in both Chinese and English.

Upstairs, you’re invited to view home interiors and objects made for local markets in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Many of the artifacts here were made for the hair and cosmetics industries, which provides an interesting (if niche) look into evolving Chinese beauty standards.

I was a big fan of the trompe l’oeil paintings in various nooks and corners of this building, designed to draw visitors into the daily life of the Republic of China time period.

The visit progresses from here to a tall, white neoclassical building, where you’ll first find a display of embroidered Chinese clothing, again from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries

I’ll admit that I started to get a bit muddled in the next rooms, because the labels were only in Chinese. At least I understood the fashion collection — but when I progressed further, while I could usually identify individual objects, I wasn’t sure what brought them together.

My iPhone Camera App translations did not always help (try making sense of “‘Guangzhou Xiajiuming Shengzuo’ model Mandarin duck lotus pond picture tin duck-shaped cup”). So I was left to wonder about the curatorial choices.

A Traditional Xiguan Mansion

I’m guessing that the third Liwan Museum building, a brick warren tucked in behind the European-style villas, is a popular favorite. The entryway alone promises something completely different.

You’re about to step into the Xiguan House, a traditional home in the residential and historically wealthy part of Guangzhou’s Liwan District. If you want to see traditional Chinese architecture, interiors, and folk customs, this is the place for you.

Want to see how the other half lived in these old houses? You can wander through living quarters, the study …

… and even the “boudoir” of this rebuilt home.

Along the way, you’ll encounter occasional examples of traditional folk art from the area, including a set of contemporary pottery reliefs that recreate the daily lives of the Xiguan people.

On the whole, though, you’re not in this building for the artifacts — you’re here to see a largely-intact house from another time.

The last of the Liwan Museum’s four buildings, a paean to General Jiang Guangnai in brick and wood, impressed me the least. If you have particular interest in this military statesman and leader — part of Sun Yat-Sen’s security team, defender of Shanghai against the Japanese, Minister of Textiles under Mao — then maybe you’ll enjoy this part. But almost nothing is in English, and a propaganda-forward museum about a single man is not my style. I mostly contented myself with admiring the charming plaques above the doorways.

I appreciated the Liwan Museum’s variety. Taking everything together, you start to get a sense of Guangzhou beyond its long-ago history and specific folk art strengths. Instead, you gain insight into how people lived and what they valued. So for all of my frustrations with the on-and-off use of English and the final museum building, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit here.

Visit Tips for the Liwan Museum

• Hours: Daily, 9:00-5:00
• How Long to Spend: 1½–2 hours
• Tickets: There is a small fee, payable at the door.
• Managing With Only English: Some pieces and rooms offer translations; others do not. You may find a few areas challenging without Chinese.

Short on Time? How to Choose One of the Best Museums in Guangzhou

Pick the Nanyue King Museum for splendor and ancient history, the Thirteen Hongs for trade and craftsmanship, and the Zhenhai Tower for a quick overview of it all. The Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is a must for architecture lovers, and the Liwan Museum offers a broad and quiet overview of 19th and 20th life.

If you’re curious about how all of these museum visits fit into my broader impressions of the city, I’ve written about Guangzhou expectations versus reality here. It’s a fascinating place — and the museums are one of the best ways to discover its delights.