This Day, That Year

Item from Sept 7, 1983, in China Daily: A group of gleaming white, pinwheelshaped halls will rise in Beijing as the country’s first science and technology palace.

The center with a floor space of 66,000 square meters, upon completion, will receive an estimated 10,000 visitors a day. There will also be a film-lecture hall with 980 seats and a panoramic cinema.

Opened in 1988, the China Science and Technology Museum had been a favorite of residents, especially teenagers, in Beijing.

After the round-topped theater opened in 1995 and the museum was expanded in 1990, its eye-catching shape became a well-known landmark in Beijing. For its time, the museum was the most advanced in China, giving visitors a jaw-dropping experience.

In 2009, a new museum building with a floor space of 102,000 square meters was completed, and the original site was shuttered.

In addition to the new museum, thousands of science and technology museums have been built across the country to increase the public’s scientific knowledge and to catch up with developed countries. Beijing hopes to increase its civic scientific literacy rate to 24 percent in 2020 from 18 percent in 2015, according to a plan by the Beijing Association for Science and Technology.

In Shanghai, there are 307 science and technology museums or bases, with about 60 million visitors in 2016.

The Shanghai Science and Technology Museum became the seventh most-visited museum in the world last year, according to a report on the museum industry.