China Fan Museum was officially opened on 29, September, 2009. Located in Hangzhou, It is Chinese first top-class themed museum of fan exhibiting a variety of rare and treasured collections of fans, which in traditional China, used to represent a special status, superior educational background and the splendid self-cultivation. Anciently fans were widely used by well-educated learners and scholars or high-level officials to show their difference and taste.

As for why Hangzhou is selected as the location of Chinese Fan Museum, the reason mainly closely connected with the fame of traditional handwork of Hangzhou thorough China. Hangzhou apart from its gorgeous landscape of nature and culture is also famous for its time-honored traditional craftsmanship. For instance, Wangxingji, which is a national-level China Time-Honored Brand, traditionally is the authority of production of traditional Chinese fans. In Hangzhou, the most valuable souvenirs are Silk Product, Longjing Green Tea and Wangxingji Fan. They together are highly praised as Three Marvels of Hangzhou. Since Song Dynasty, Hangzhou has been the center of China’s fan industry and fan culture.

Chinese Fan Museum is located in themed street of history and culture in West Gongchenqiao scenic area. The visitors boom since its formal opening. Fan in China, to a most degree, is the symbol of culture. Anciently, Fan was used for rites rather than for enjoying the cool. Hence the making of fan is also elaborated; especially, the main body of the fan is mostly featured with charm and Chinese classical culture. On such a limited paper, it shows the quintessence of Chinese scholar culture----Painting, Calligraphy and Inking. It was a fashion actually in ancient China, in particular in Ming and Qing Dynasties. A massive of Chinese famous artists or talented learners are quite interested in this field such as Wu Changshuo, Zhang Daqian, Fu Baoshi, Zheng Banqiao, Shi Tao and Ren Bonian and so on. So fan in Chinese mind always shows a part of honor in culture.

“扇业祖师殿”(Hall of Founder of fan industry) is an important collection in China Fan Museum and also a special treasure in this themed museum. “扇业祖师殿”is an engraved stone slab of Qing dynasty. It is made of bluestones, with an outline of Chinese character“凸”. Its length is 3.5 meters, width 0.9 meters and the thickness is 10 cm. it weighs more than 1ton. The three Chinese characters “扇业祖师殿”are engraved with regular scripts, the length of each character is 41cm, and it is highly skilled engraving giving intensified artistic thrills. It is a justification of Hangzhou’s fan industry development as well as a milestone of the fan industry as a whole. Currently the largest fan collected in this museum is made in Wangxingji. It boasts Divine Fan(神扇) with a height of 2.6 meters and the total length is 5 meters. This special fan was well reserved in a serious fire, which happened in 1990.