As the world’s eyes turn to Beijing for the opening of the 29th Olympiad this week, ARTINFO offers a museum top five from across Greater China. There’s plenty to choose from: The Chinese seem to love museums almost as much as Americans do. Taiwan’s Council for Cultural Affairs boasts “more than 400 museums” (!) and Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai each have dozens. Plus, new museums are popping up faster than Olympic hopefuls in China nowadays, from MoCA China, which is opening this fall in Hong Kong, to a Jackie Chan Museum in Shanghai, which was announced just last month. From the sublime to the ridiculous, almost exactly.

1. Hong Kong Heritage Museum

We have to start here: “The Ancient Olympic Games” (which was first shown in Shanghai between May and July) is a blockbuster show organized in collaboration with the British Museum and featuring more than 100 priceless objects from the latter’s collection. The star of the show is the Roman marble sculpture Discobolus (The Discus Thrower), which is based on a lost Greek bronze from the 5th century B.C. and which has never been exhibited outside of London (or not in modern times, anyway). There’s also plenty of pottery, jewelry, coins, and medals, all of which highlight the ancient games, its celebrations, and its religious context; a scale model of Olympia, home of the ancient games; and a special focus on their founder, Herakles. As one might expect of the British Museum, this is probably the highest-brow offering on our list.

2. The Clock Museum, Beijing

We’ll continue with another traditional offering. Comprising almost 1,000 buildings, Beijing’s Forbidden City, as the 15th-century imperial palace is known, is dauntingly vast, and many visitors find a visit exhausting. For those who prefer to have a particular destination prepared in advance than to just wander aimlessly, there is no more charmingly bizarre destination than the clock museum, which is at the rear of the complex near the imperial garden. The collection of clocks, which reflects the Qing emperors’ obsession with measurement and control, comes mostly from English and French workshops of the 17th and 18th centuries.

3. Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing

While contemporary art galleries are easy to find in Chinese cities that have sustained links with the West, contemporary art museums are much rarer, as they are far less likely to turn a quick yuan. The new Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, in Beijing’s fashionable 798 District, is probably the closest thing. It’s a nonprofit institution housed in an amazing building (designed by Jean Michel Wilmotte and Ma Qinyun) with a program focused on the collection of Belgian millionaires Guy and Myriam Ullens — and already has, less than a year after it opened, a history of curatorial disagreements and departures. Yes, that just about qualifies it. This summer’s special exhibition is “Our Future,” which highlights the history of the Ullens’ two decades of collecting contemporary Chinese art, alongside smaller exhibits by clothing sculptor Yin Xiuzhen, conceptual image manipulator Ji Zhou, and fashion photographer Chen Man.

4. MoCA Shanghai

Many visitors reckon that calling itself MoCA, and thus inviting comparisons with much bigger institutions, such as those in L.A. or Massachusetts, is a bit of a stretch, but this was certainly the first contemporary art museum in Shanghai. Though it’s small (about half the size of the Ullens Center), the museum, opened in 2005, presents an enterprising and doggedly international program. (This summer’s special exhibition, “Material Links,” for example, shows Chinese and Greek contemporary work side by side.) Housed in a gorgeous three-story former greenhouse in the heart of Shanghai’s People’s Park, it’s a must-see for any visitor to Shanghai.

5. The National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

My final choice isn’t technically in China — though some would argue otherwise — but the National Palace Museum is widely regarded as one of the greatest museums in the world, and has a core collection from the same imperial collection as Beijing’s Palace Museum, which was split apart during the long Chinese Civil War. The museum is vast: By one reckoning it owns more than 655,000 objects, and it aims to put 60,000 a year on show in its rotating displays. If you're planning a trip to the area, but you’re not actually interested in the games, this might be the place to get lost for the next three weeks.