Palace Museum shines
▶ World’s largest to open at night after 94 years
Enthusiastic visitors have paralyzed the Palace Museum’s ticketing system as the world’s largest museum announced it would open at night on Tuesday and Wednesday for the first time in 94 years to celebrate the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival.
The celebration will feature a red lantern show, light projections of renowned ancient paintings and New Year-themed exhibits.
The announcement lit up Chinese social media, with many fans waiting until midnight to grab the tickets online. Those who failed to get one joked that those who succeeded in getting tickets were “the ones chose by eave
om reality shows to cultural and creative products, even the design and production of cosmetics, the Palace Museum is attempting to change its image as a mysterious and aging relic to a popular cultural icon. The museum, which used to be a stern and cold institution, has moved closer to people’s lives and “new” has become a keyword in the museum’s development.
Chinese visitors also hailed the firstever night viewing as another innovation to promote traditional culture and draw the public closer to history.
Scalpers galore
The museum will hang a red lantern every five meters. More than 300 red lanterns will form a shape of dragon to light up the old buildings of the Palace Museum (also known as th Forbidden City), Shan Jixiang, Palace Museum curator, said at a conference on Sunday.
According to the announcement, some sanitation workers, delivery couriers, soldiers, police officers and other "model workers" in Beijing will be invited to the event.
During peak seasons, each ticket to the Palace Museum costs 60 yuan ($8.87) but it is given for free for the Lantern Festival event. The museum’s online ticket system stalled the night of the announcement. Scalpers were selling tickets for up to 9,999 yuan on Xianyu, an online marketplace for secondhand goods. One scalper on the platform told the Global Times on Monday that even the 5,000 yuan tickets sold out in one day. many netizens who failed
to get a ticket vented their frustrations online, urging the Palace Museum to re-open its ticket system. However, the ticket office told the Global Times on Monday that it won't release more tickets at night for the Lantern Festival, and is not sure whether it would open more night activities.
People's Daily hailed the museum's first opening at night as another innovative way to promote traditional culture. “Creativity makes the 600-year-old Palace Museum younger and draws traditional culture closer to the public,” the newspaper said.
Old museum’s new success
After Shan was named the museum's curator, tremendous changes to the museum shocked the nation. Efforts to reshape its image and expand its appeal have won praise.
The three-part documentary Master In Forbidden City, which aired on Central China Television and shines light on stories of restorers of cultural relics working inside the Forbidden City, received a rating of 9.4/10 on douban.com, one of China's film and TV review websites. National Treasure, another TV show in which popular stars explored traditional relics by explaining their role in China's social development, scored 9.0 out of 10 points on Douban.
Many people said the innovative expressions of traditional culture have helped deepen their understanding of China's history and culture.
As part of a plan to celebrate the museum's 600th birthday in 2020, Shan also vowed to open 85 percent of its exhibition space to the public by 2020.
The museum is gradually expanding. It opened more than 80 percent to the public in 2018 and Shan vowed to open 85.02 percent by 2025.
The rejuvenation of the Palace Museum should also be cited for the improvement in the public's aesthetic taste. “The museum cannot lag behind during the ‘spring of culture era,' when people have the highest interest and demand for cultural products,” said Liu Zheng, a member of the Beijing-based China Cultural Relics Academy.
Setting an example
As a country with an over 5,000-yearold civilization, China owns 10,815 removable cultural relics and 766,722 irremovable ones in 4,800 museums, according to 2017 data from the National Cultural Heritage Administration.
The success of the Palace Museum also provides a template for other museums, to teach them how to make their collections resonate with the public, and allow more people to learn about culture and history, said Liu.
Museums such as the Suzhou Museum and Shanghai Museum upgraded to promote their cultural products. For example, the Shanghai Museum has cooperated with the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US and other overseas museums to broaden the scope of cultural products for the Chinese public, media reported.
In December 2017, Shan said that when Europe and the US were in a dominant position, museums from these places were seen as the world's top museums, but this is changing, now that the Palace Museum has started taking a more active role in global cultural undertakings.