Zhejiang Museum of Natural History

This guide to the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History in Hangzhou traces the museum back to the West Lake Exposition of 1929, a four-month world's-fair-style show that drew an estimated twenty million visitors and included a working zoo alongside its industrial halls and pavilions. When the gates closed, organizers petitioned the provincial government over what to do with the leftover specimens and animals, and that leftover collection became the seed of the West Lake Museum the same year. You'll hear how it was renamed, split into its own institution, and eventually moved into this building at West Lake Cultural Square in 2009. The zoo's living exhibits are long gone, replaced today by specimens gathered from Zhejiang's own hillsides.