Seeing beautiful treasures from Hubei Provincial Museum online

Powered by the 360-degree panorama and high-resolution image acquisition technologies, a virtual tour of the Hubei Provincial Museum has become a reality on Google Arts & Culture.

By simply tapping on the screen to zoom in, you can get a close-up view of the museum's globally renowned artifact, a set of 65 bronze chime bells dating back 2,400 years to the time of the Marquis Yi of the Zeng state.

Moreover, the virtual tour is guided by influential museum photographer Dongmaiying, a Wuhan local who boasts 3.85 million followers on China's Twitter-equivalent of Weibo. A regular to the museum, the photographer has taken a bulk of stunning shots of the museum's treasured artifacts, whose back stories are also shared over the guided tour.

The Hubei Provincial Museum, one of the country's key museums at the provincial level, houses 240,000 cultural relics, epitomizing the rich and brilliant culture and arts originating in the region.

Hubei, historically known as Chu, is home to the great poet Qu Yuan (c. 340-278 BC), who penned the canonical work Chu Ci (Verses of Chu), arguably one of the cornerstones of the ancient Chinese poetry tradition.