Shanghai Water Gate Museum

The Shanghai Water Gate Museum from the outside

The small copy of the water gate inside the museum

The real water gate inside the museum. The hole in the floor is the one that was made by the workers who found the gate in 2001.

The Shanghai Water Gate Museum is a museum in Shanghai, China. It lets people see a water gate from the old path of the Wusong River (today's Suzhou Creek) from 700 years ago. It is free.

The gate itself is an important historical and cultural place protected by China's national government.

Name

The museum's full name the Shanghai Yuan Dynasty Water Gate Museum. Its Chinese name is the Shánghǎi Yuándài Shuǐzhá Yízhǐ Bówùguǎn. It is written as 上海元代水閘遺址博物館 in the older writing used on Hong Kong and Taiwan and 上海元代水闸遗址博物馆 in the easier writing used on the mainland.

Location

The museum is at 619 West Yanchang Road (延长西路619号) in Shanghai's Putuo District. It's at the corner of West Yangchang and Zhidan Roads.

History

Ren Renfa and his workers built the water gate on the Wusong River around 1300 during the Yuan Dynasty. Today, Suzhou Creek is small and less important than the Huangpu River, but it used to be bigger and more important for all the cities between Suzhou and the East China Sea. Dirt and sand in the river ("silt") slowly made it narrower and narrower. People built the water gate to help stop and wash away some of the dirt. The river changed its path to the south, the old gate became covered with dirt, and people forgot where it was.

Workers found the water gate in May 2001 while they were building new apartment buildings in the area. Once they understood that the stone their machines hit was a very old building, archaeologists came to look at it. The archaeologists started digging in January 2004 and finished in May 2006.

Workers started building the museum in November 2009 and finished on December 31st, 2012.

Other websites

• 《上海元代水闸遗址博物馆》 on Baidu Baike (in Chinese)