LANZHOU, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Construction on a bamboo slip museum started Wednesday in the city of Lanzhou, northwest China's Gansu Province, the provincial cultural relic bureau said.

Covering an area of 38,000 square meters, the museum will have exhibition halls, digitalization display rooms, storage rooms and restoration rooms.

Expected to open to the public in 2021, the museum will help store, protect, restore and study bamboo slips -- used for writing prior to the widespread introduction of paper -- as well as display over 40,000 bamboo slips and more than 10,000 cultural relics.

Over 80,000 bamboo slips have been unearthed since 1907 in the province. Among them, 70,000 are from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), which are important artifacts of the ancient Silk Road, accounting for 80 percent of the total in China.