Shandong Provincial Museum

This new museum opened in 2011 and contains a stunning collection of ancient Chinese art: calligraphy, bronzes, paintings, ceramics, textiles. They've got it all. Each gallery has bilingual signage to provide background about the pieces, though most of the actual pieced don't have English descriptions.

As Confucius lived and taught in Shandong, there's a gallery about his life with artifacts that illuminate his work and the era he lived in.

The museum is large enough to get a full sense of the region's history and culture, without being so immense that it exhausts or overwhelms.