China's biggest museum exhibiting ancient bamboo and wooden strips, precursors of paper, will open to the public in October after three years' construction.

Located in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, the museum was co-funded by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the municipal government, costing 66 million yuan (US$7.9 million), said Song Shaohua, the curator.

The three-story museum, designed in the style of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), covers over 12,000 square meters, consisting of preservation chambers, exhibition halls and the research center.

Song said that in 1996 over 140,000 bamboo and wooden strips of the Three Kingdoms period (220 to 280) were unearthed in Changsha, and another 10,000 from the Han Dynasty were discovered in 2003.

All of these would be stored at the museum, he said.

The museum would preserve, research and exhibit bamboo and wooden strips, said Song.

Bamboo and wooden strips were popular materials for writing before the invention of paper in the Qin (221 BC to 206 BC) and Han dynasties.
 

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)