Yantai Shandong Liberated Area Customs History Museum Launches, Showcasing?a Century of Changes in Yantai Customs

Shuimu Net, August 23, 2025 (by YMG All-Media Reporter Wang Hongyun, Correspondents: Zheng Zhe, Zhang Jianing, and Qu Yanlin) On August 22, 2025, the Yantai Shandong Liberated Area Customs History Museum officially opened to the public. 

The museum is located within the former site of the Chefoo Customs Tax Commissioner’s Office, designated as a sixth-batch National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit. Built in 1864, the Chefoo Customs Tax Commissioner’s Office served as a customs office for over 120 years and is currently the oldest and best-preserved historical customs office building within China’s customs system.

Organized around four core themes of “Humiliation of Customs”, “Struggle and Resilience”, “Rebirth”, and “The Spark of Revolution”, the museum showcases the century-long evolution of Yantai Customs through physical exhibits, multimedia installations, historical photographs, and archival documents, serving as a vivid educational resource on the establishment and development of the people’s customs.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, as well as the 80th anniversary of the founding of Yantai Customs. On August 24, 1945, in the wake of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, Yantai was liberated and became the earliest and largest coastal port city to be freed at the time. On the same day, the anti-Japanese democratic government took over Chefoo Customs (the predecessor of Yantai Customs), ending more than eight decades of dominance by Western powers and establishing it as the first people’s customs authority under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
In the years surrounding the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Yantai Customs trained and dispatched more than 270 cadres to customs offices across the nation. Over 80 of these individuals later rose to leadership roles at the departmental or bureau level, making profound contributions to the establishment and development of New China’s customs affairs. The agency is known as “the cradle of New China’s customs cadres”.