Exploring China’s fascinating museums

The 2,500-year-old bianzhong or bronze chime bells are the largest, most complete, and best-preserved set of ancient bells ever discovered. — Photos: LEESAN

My travel companions and I flew into Zhengzhou in China one day early, not for retail therapy or not for cafe-hopping, but for a single determined purpose: to see the crown jewels of the Henan Museum, the over 3,000-year-old oracle bone inscriptions.

To put it more poetically, this was a pilgrimage to converse with the origin of Chinese writing.