Museum
Liwan Museum (Chen Lianzhong Residence)
- Mon
- Closed
- Tue
- 09:00–17:30
- Wed
- 09:00–17:30
- Thu
- 09:00–17:30
- Fri
- 09:00–17:30
- Sat
- 09:00–17:30
- Sun
- 09:00–17:30
- Hours
- Last entry and ticket sales at 17:00; closed on Mondays except public holidays.
- Price
- Full ticket: CNY 5; discounted ticket: CNY 2. Free admission is available for certain visitor categories.
- How to visit
- Smoking, eating and loud talking are not allowed in the exhibition areas. Do not use flash, tripods or selfie sticks; visitors in inappropriate attire may be refused entry.
- Hours
- Ticket required
- Hours
- About 60 min
Why it is worth the detour
Silk merchant and HSBC comprador Chen Lianzhong built this hybrid mansion with European arches, columns and a Chinese garden beside the old waterways. Now incorporated into Liwan Museum, it stands beside a reconstructed Xiguan mansion whose interiors explain how wealthy merchant families actually lived behind their imposing doors.
Liwan Museum, housed in the Chen Lianzhong Residence, showcases a unique blend of European and Chinese architecture and offers insights into the lives of wealthy merchant families. It features European arches, columns, and a Chinese garden.
The people behind this address
Documented connections, not celebrity trivia.
Chen Lianzhong
The silk merchant and banker commissioned and occupied the mansion that now forms the principal historic building of Liwan Museum.
What else is close by
The nearest places we have written up, with straight-line distance from here.
200 m
Wenta Pagoda
No surviving record securely identifies who built this small waterside tower, but Pantang tradition says villagers raised it to improve the community’s scholarly fortune and examination success. Nearby stonework once connected the site with a royal flower garden of the Southern Han period, although those inscriptions later disappeared.
250 m
Chen Lianbo Mansion
This canal-side mansion belonged to banker and merchant leader Chen Lianbo, whose adjoining private landing allowed guests to arrive by launch. Its rooms hosted the Liwan Club, where commercial elites mixed business with politics before Chen’s armed Merchant Corps came into violent conflict with Sun Yat-sen’s government in 1924.
450 m
Cantonese Opera Art Museum
Cantonese opera museum at 127 Enning Road, with its own halls and collection.
450 m
Bruce Lee Ancestral House
The house is better understood as the home of Bruce Lee’s father, Lee Hoi-chuen, one of Cantonese opera’s celebrated comic-role performers in the 1940s. The restored Xiguan residence links two performance traditions: the stylized combat of Cantonese opera and the screen martial arts that Bruce Lee later transformed into a global phenomenon.
Walk it with the stories
This address is one stop among many. Our routes and quests link them into a walk that makes sense on the ground.