About 1911 Revolution Museum

1911 Revolution Museum

The 1911 Revolution Museum in Wuchang, Wuhan, Hubei Province, is China's national thematic museum of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and ended more than two thousand years of imperial rule. In its present form the museum dates from 2022, when two older Wuhan institutions sharing one administration were formally integrated: the North District, the museum built around the famous Red Building, the seat of the Hubei Military Government created by the Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911; and the South District, the large V-shaped Xinhai Revolution Museum built for the revolution's centenary in 2011, about 500 metres away. Together the two districts hold more than 23,000 items relating to the revolution and present its history where it began, beside Shouyi Square and the Yellow Crane Tower in the historic core of Wuchang. This is the Wuhan museum of the 1911 Revolution; it is a different institution from Guangzhou's Memorial Museum of 1911 Revolution on Changzhou Island, which commemorates the same revolution from Guangdong's perspective.

The Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911

The museum exists because of a single night. On 10 October 1911, revolutionary soldiers of the New Army in Wuchang rose in revolt after a bomb accident in Hankou exposed their plans and arrests began. The uprising seized the city, and within days province after province declared independence from the Qing, setting in motion the collapse of the dynasty and the founding of the Republic of China on 1 January 1912. Wuchang's claim to be the city of the first shot — Shouyi, the place of the first uprising — gives Wuhan a unique place in the revolution's geography, distinct from Guangzhou, where Sun Yat-sen's movement had organised for years, and from Nanjing, where the provisional republican government sat. The museum's permanent interpretation follows this sequence from conspiracy and accident to uprising, military government and republic, using the city's own sites — including Uprising Gate, the only surviving gate of old Wuchang — as part of its historical setting.

The Red Building and the Hubei Military Government

The North District centres on the Red Building, so called for its red brick walls and red tiles. Built in 1909-10 as the Hubei Provincial Consultative Bureau, a late-Qing provincial assembly building in Western classical style, it was taken over after the uprising and became the seat of the Hubei Military Government of the Republic of China. There the revolutionary regime organised itself, with the senior Qing commander Li Yuanhong pressed into service as governor-general — he later twice served as President of the Republic, in 1916-17 and 1922-23. The building's main inscription was written by Soong Ching-ling. In 1961 the site was listed in the first batch of national key cultural relic protection units, an exceptionally early recognition reflecting its status as the birthplace of China's first revolutionary provincial government. The restored interiors present the military government as it functioned in 1911-12, with offices and meeting rooms returned to their period arrangement.

The North District museum, established 1981

A memorial museum was created around the Red Building in 1981, established as the Museum of Wuchang Uprising of 1911 Revolution, to protect the site and present its relics. Its core displays have remained consistent through successive renovations: a restoration exhibition of the former Hubei Military Government, showing the building in its governmental role, and an exhibition of historical relics of the Wuchang Uprising, built from objects, documents and photographs of the revolution in Hubei. Donations from participants' families, including material associated with figures such as Xiong Bingkun and Huang Xing, and objects ranging from concession boundary markers to Hanyang Arsenal material, give the North District collection a strongly local, participant-based character. The Red Building museum was rated a national first-grade museum in the third batch in 2017. Admission is free, and the North District visit is comparatively compact — typically under an hour — centred on the historic building itself.

The South District: a centenary museum

For the centenary of the revolution, Wuhan built a second, much larger museum a short walk south of the Red Building. Constructed between 2009 and 2011 on a site of about 22,000 square metres, the South District building opened free to the public in October 2011. Seen from above it forms a giant letter V, for victory, and its exterior uses a deep red described as Chu red, referencing the ancient Chu culture of the Hubei region. Where the North District is a preserved historic seat of government, the South District is a purpose-built narrative museum, designed for large permanent exhibitions, multimedia presentation and the visitor volumes of a centenary landmark. Its scale allowed the combined institution to display the revolution's national story — its origins in late-Qing reform and crisis, the revolutionary movement's years of organisation, the uprising and the founding and defence of the Republic — at a breadth the Red Building alone could never accommodate.

Integration in 2022 and the combined museum

The two Wuhan institutions had long shared one administration and one website, operating as the two halves of a single commemorative complex across Shouyi Square. In 2022 they were formally integrated as the 1911 Revolution Museum, with the Red Building site as the North District and the centenary building as the South District. The merged museum presents itself as the national thematic museum of the Xinhai Revolution, holds designations including national patriotic education and youth education base status, and is a national 4A tourist attraction. Integration clarified a longstanding visitor confusion between similarly named Wuhan venues and allowed collection, research and education work to be planned across both sites: the historic building contributes authenticity and place, the modern building contributes space and exhibition technology, and the square between them, with its statue of Sun Yat-sen, functions as the civic forecourt of the whole complex.

Collections and emblematic objects

The combined museum holds more than 23,000 items relating to the 1911 Revolution, organised in seven categories: objects, emblems and insignia, stone carvings, calligraphy and painting, genealogies, documents, and certificates. The permanent Foundation of the Republic display in the South District presents more than 300 key artefacts and photographs tracing the revolution's course and the establishment of the republican order. The museum's emblematic object is the Iron-Blood Eighteen-Star Flag, the banner of the Wuchang revolutionary forces, whose eighteen stars represented the provinces of China proper united in the uprising; a large version marks the entrance of the North District and the flag recurs throughout the museum's visual identity. Other displays include the Groundbreaking exhibition of Wuchang Uprising relics in the North District and extensive photographic holdings documenting revolutionary organisation at home and among overseas Chinese communities, whose financial and political support for Sun Yat-sen's movement the museum treats as an integral part of the story.

Education, research and public role

As the museum of the revolution in the city where it ignited, the institution carries an unusually heavy educational mandate. It serves as a national patriotic education demonstration base and a base for youth and school research-and-practice education, and it anchors Wuhan's red tourism routes, linking the Red Building and Shouyi Square with other revolutionary sites in Wuchang such as the site of the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong's former residence. Its location beside the Yellow Crane Tower, Wuhan's most famous landmark, places revolutionary history on the itinerary of almost every visitor to the historic city. For researchers, the museum's document, genealogy and certificate holdings, and its curatorial focus on the mechanics of the 1911-12 transition — military government finance, proclamations, personnel and diplomacy — make it a working archive of how a revolution improvised a state. The 2022 integration, by uniting site museum and narrative museum under one name, completed the institution's evolution from a protected building with displays into China's principal public interpreter of 1911.

Visiting the two districts

A visit to the 1911 Revolution Museum is planned around its two halves. The North District, in the Red Building on Wuluo Road by Shouyi Square, rewards a slower reading of a single historic interior: the council chamber turned military government headquarters, the governor's offices and the relic displays of the uprising's Hubei participants. The South District, on Pengliuyang Road a few minutes' walk away, requires more time for its large permanent narrative galleries and the Foundation of the Republic display. Both districts are free and operate on reservation arrangements that change with current museum policy, so visitors are advised to check the museum's shared official website before travelling. Combined with Uprising Gate and the Yellow Crane Tower nearby, the two districts form the core of a half-day revolutionary-history itinerary in Wuchang that no other Chinese city can replicate, because no other city holds both the uprising's government building and a centenary museum built to explain it.