Jinsha Site Museum (金沙遗址博物馆, Jīnshā Yízhǐ Bówùguǎn)

In 2001, a construction crew digging drainage in western Chengdu hit ivory and jade. What they'd found was a major sacrificial and residential site of the ancient Shu (蜀, Shǔ) kingdom, roughly 3,000 years old, contemporary with the Shang and Zhou dynasties but culturally distinct — a civilization that left no readable writing and had been largely dismissed as legend.

The museum is built directly over the dig. The Excavation Hall is a vast covered pit where you walk raised walkways above exposed earth, elephant tusks, and boar tusks still in situ, with archaeologists occasionally working below. It's raw and quietly impressive in a way that reconstructed halls never manage.

The Relics Hall next door holds the finds: jade cong tubes, stone kneeling figures, thousands of ivory fragments, and a small collection of extraordinary gold work. The star is the Golden Sun Bird (太阳神鸟, Tàiyáng Shénniǎo), a paper-thin gold foil disc 12.5cm across showing four birds circling a rayed sun. It's now the emblem of Chengdu and of China's cultural heritage protection, and seeing the original — smaller and finer than any reproduction suggests — is the point of the visit.

Reviews are genuinely split. If you don't care for archaeology, two hours of pottery shards and dim cases will drag, and ¥70 ($9.80) feels steep next to the free Sichuan Museum. If you have any interest in pre-imperial China, this is the most significant site in the province you can reach by metro. The surrounding park, with ginkgo and plum blossom in season, is a pleasant bonus.