Recently, three museums in North China's Shanxi province were selected to be included in the list of national first-class museums, which was released by the Chinese Museums Association.

The three museums are the Taiyuan Museum, the Jinci Temple Museum, and the Yuncheng Museum. To date, Shanxi boasts nine national first-class museums, highlighting not only its rich historical and cultural heritage, but also its vigorous museum industry development.

Entering the list of national first-class museums represents that a museum has proven that it can provide social service functions at the highest level in terms of comprehensive management, infrastructure, collection quantity, collection management, and scientific research.

As a cultural landmark and the only comprehensive museum in Taiyuan, the Taiyuan Museum currently has a collection of over 50,000 items that are sorted into more than 10 categories, such as pottery, porcelain, jade, bronze, calligraphy and painting, and furniture. All of these cultural relics reflect the local history and culture of Taiyuan.

As the earliest royal sacrificial garden in China, the Jinci Temple Museum features the combination of ancient architecture and gardens, sculptures, murals, inscriptions and couplets, showcasing the integration of sacrificial, religious, and folk culture.

Since its establishment in 2013, the Yuncheng Museum has collected over 30,000 relics. The ape fossils exhibited in the museum can be dated back to approximately 45 million years ago, predating what we know about the origin of higher primates by 10 million years.