This Day, That Year

Item from Jan 3, 1989, in China Daily: Forbidden entry … Disappointed crowds mingle in front of Forbidden City’s South Gate after failing to get into the imperial palace on Jan 1 because of a new regulation limiting admission to the Palace Museum to 25,000 daily (30,000 during holidays) . ...

The Forbidden City in Beijing was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The palace, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, was the center of the Chinese government for almost 500 years.

It now houses the Palace Museum, which has been receiving an average of 10 million tourists annually, following an easing of visitor restrictions over the past few years.

Since 2014, the annual visitor number exceeded 15 million — way more than the number of people visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris or the British Museum in London.

Archaeologists are worried about the soaring number of visitors. They believe the number should be controlled to protect the security of the tourists as well as the relics.

In June 2015, the Palace Museum started limiting the number of daily visitors to 80,000.

It also imposed a realname registration system for visitors.