Hong Kong Museum of History (Hong Kong): A life-size diorama of a Neolithic settlement, replicas of fishing boats and traditional houses, ethnic clothing, displays of colorful festivals, and whole streets of old shop frontages with their interiors removed piece by piece and rebuilt here, make this the most entertaining museum in China.

Shanxi Lìshi Bówùguan (Xi'an): If you can visit only one museum in China, this should be it. An unrivalled collection of treasures, many demonstrating Xi'an's international contacts via the Silk Routes, is more professionally displayed here than almost anywhere else in the mainland.

Unit 731 Museum (Harbin): During World War II, Japan set up a secret facility where it tested biological weapons on thousands of live human subjects. This museum, built on what remains of the Unit 731 testing grounds, presents a gloomy but vivid account of one of the war's most obscure and shocking atrocities.

Sanxing Dui Bówùguan (Chéngdu): An attractive and well-laid-out museum housing items from a group of sacrificial pits, this is one of the most significant finds in 20th-century China.

Shànghai Bówùguan (Shànghai): In terms of display and English labeling, this ultra-modern museum (lights fade as you approach cabinets), loaded with stunning antiquities, is China's most modern and inviting.

Nánjing Dàtúsha Jìniànguan (Nánjing): The deaths of over 300,000 Chinese, killed over the course of 6 weeks during the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nánjing, are commemorated here. Photographs and artifacts documenting the Japanese onslaught, the atrocities suffered, and the aftermath, are sobering, grisly, and shockingly effective.

Wáng Antíng Xiaoxiao Zhanlanguan (Chéngdu): Located in a narrow lane west of the main town square, this small, one-of-a-kind museum contains tens of thousands of Máo pins, Cultural Revolution memorabilia, and vintage photographs. The museum occupies the living room of its devoted proprietor.