With an area of 2,200 square meters and a building area of 700 square meters, the garden consists of nine bell pavilions and 32 bell corridors for keeping ancient bells with local features from 32 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to symbolize the unification of Jiuzhou (the nine divisions of China in remote antiquity, now a poetic name for China) and the unity of the Chinese nation.
The Nine-pavilion Bell Garden was built with a donation of 3 million yuan from Mr Yu Yuen-ping, a patriot in Hong Kong. The project was completed in 1994. Up to now, about a dozen of bells have been collected or reproduced. They are from Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Hubei, Shanxi, Hebei, Ningxia, Shandong, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Jiangxi and Fujian. More ancient bells will be collected from other provinces and autonomous regions to make the Nine-pavilion Bell Garden a new tourist attraction at the museum and a base for patriotic education.
