China's Museums

Speech at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Fu Ying,

Sydney University, 2006-9-7

President Carolyn Forster,

Vice President Max Dingle,

Director Edmund Capon,

I'd like to thank the Australian Federation of Friends of Museums for inviting me to speak to you.

China has a long and continuous written history and has a rich collection of historical objects. Museums are the most important vehicle for presenting and preserving history.

China's first public museum "Nantong Museum" was established in 1905 by Zhang Jian in Nantong city, Jiang Su Province. Zhang was renowned in China for his achievement in developing education and industry.

In the 44 years between 1905 and 1949, there was very slow progress in building new museums as China was engulfed in first the anti-Japanese war and then the civil war. Until 1949, only 25 museums were opened.

Since 1949, about 2300 new museum have been set up all over the country in which more than 20 million objects are on display or in storage. 10000 exhibitions are held every year, attracting more than 160 million visitors.

I am a museum lover myself. Let me show you some of those I have visited.

China National Museum is newly established. It located to the eastern side of Tian Anmen Square in Beijing. It was formed in 2003, by merging the Museum of the Chinese Revolution and the National Museum of Chinese History, which were on the same site before. This is a landmark for China as it is the first and the only national museum. It has some of the most important national treasures.

Every province and autonomous region has its own museums. I went to Sinjiang during my recent home visit. It is in the extreme western part of China and has a big Muslim population. In its museum there is an impressive display of the history of that region with the central government and its role on the silk route. The museum also has a special room for the Loulan Mummies.

The Tibetan Museum was inaugurated in October of 1999. Its focus is the History of Tibetan Culture. In its permanent exhibition, there are 1,000 precious objects such as beautiful embroidered thangka, Tibetan sculpture, Tibetan dress etc. There is also an impressive exhibition of the Tibetan medical history.

Budala Palace is both Temple and Museum. Having opened to tourists for years, there is serious concern among the locals of the continuous wearing of the steps and room floor as well as the sacred items. I read on the news that this might be the last year it opens and will soon be closed to repair. There is no decision on opening again.

The Shaanxi History Museum is situated in Xi'an City, the capital city of Shaanxi Province. Xi'an served as the capital for 13 dynasties. Xi'an museum is one of the three biggest museums in China. Its collection includes 90,000 objects, which tells the tales of Shaanxi's ancient history from 150,000 years ago to the year 1840. The most impressive being the torre cotta warriors.

About half an hour from Chengdu, a new museum was built for a major discovery in 1980s. Two large Shang period sacrificial pits were unearthed with more than a thousand gold, bronze, and jade objects, shocking the country and the world. The age of them is about 4800-4000. This area was the capital of ancient Chu Kingdom. The interesting thing is that this some of the masks and figures are not like the features familiar to us. They have long and straight nose, square face, and very big eyes. There are ceremonial objects. But is it what they imagined or they looked like that themselves is a mystery.

The grottoes can be seen as extended art gallery of ancient sculptures, wall paintings and sutras. Although this gallery is not called a 'museum', it holds some of the rarest and most precious works of art in the world. China's most famous grottoes include Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, Yungang Grottoes, Longmen Grottoes, etc.

The China Tea Museum is at Xihu Lake in Hangzhou. It displays the history of tea, tea treatment and tea customs. It also demonstrates the planting, plunking, processing, preserving and steeping of tea.

The new Quanzhou Overseas-relations history Museum was built in 1990. Quanzhou was one of the most important harbors in the old time. This museums collection includes ancient ships, antique ceramics, precious photos etc.

The 5000-year history of China is basically a history of feudal totalitarian rule. In the past, China's best antiques and most artworks were kept in the procession of the royal family. Therefore, the Palace Museum, commonly known as the Forbidden City, has the richest collections, which came from various dynasties.

Palace Museum is situated in the center of Beijing. It was established in 1925, after the last emperor Pu Yi was asked by the then nationalist government to move out of the palace.

The museum covers 720,000 square meters. The construction began in 1420. Most of the complex has a history of 580 years. (There are more than 70 halls of various sizes, comprising over 9000 rooms. )

There are more than 1 million precious objects in its collections, including more than 30,000 jade pieces, 40,000 ancient paintings, and 15,000 bronzes pieces.

On the other side of the Taiwan straight, there is another Palace Museums. There is a story behind the twin museums.

In the late 1930s, China was under heavy bombing by the Japanese forces. To prevent the treasure from being damaged, 30 000 boxes of precious cultural relics were taken out of the palace museum and sent to Sichuan Province which was the rear of the Resistance. The treasure boxes traveled in 5 route covering a distance of 10 000 km. It was a marvel that nothing was damaged or lost during the long journey.

After the war, they were sent to Nanjing, the capital of the Nationalist government.

After three years of civil war, Jiang Jieshi Group (KMT), which lost in the war, was retreating to Taiwan; they selected more than 600 000 items from the near 1.8 million cultural relics and delivered them by air or sea to Taiwan.

Most are placed in the Palace Museum in Taiwan. Since the two museums are from the same source, many of them are connected to each other. Visiting the museum in Taiwan is the wish of many on the mainland.

Coming back to the museums on the mainland, we have to admit that there are some serious challenges and difficulties.

Firstly, we need to build more museums. With a population of 1.3 billion, the number of museums in China is far from meeting the demand. Australia has about 1300 museums for 20 million people. France has more than 4000 museums for 60 million people. By comparison, there is a lot to do in China.

Secondly, most of China's museums do not have enough exhibition space to put all their collections on display.

For example, Palace Museum has more than one million objects in its collection; only 1% is out there for permanent exhibition.

Thirdly, most museums rely on government funding. They are incapable of coping with the new market environment. About 66% of the museums have difficulties surviving, let alone expending. Some of the collections are not very well preserved.

Along with the fast economic and social development in China, there will also be improvement in the management of museums. China's museums should learn from the overseas museums, including those in Australia, through cooperation.

Thank you.