Symbol of an 'ideal society'

Related: Top 10 treasures

On the eve of the centenary celebration of the National Museum of China, reporter Zhu Linyong looks back on its history.

The National Museum of China will celebrate its 100th birthday on Monday. From China's first public museum to one of the world's largest, the museum has witnessed the country's ups and downs over the past century. "We're trying our best to put it among the world's best museums," says Lu Zhangshen, the museum's director. Covering an area of 200,000 square meters, the museum has more than 1.2 million cultural relics and artworks in its permanent collection.

From 2007 to 2010, the museum underwent extensive renovations and expansion at a cost of 2.5 billion yuan ($394 million).

The museum contains 48 large exhibition halls, a theater, a conference hall and a broadcasting studio, along with souvenir shops, bookstores, cinemas, theaters, education centers, a teahouse and restaurants.

Over the past year, the museum has held more than 50 large-scale exhibitions, organized academic seminars and symposiums on arts and cultural heritage, and received more than 4.1 million visitors.

However, "the quest for a national museum had a humble start back in 1912", says museum researcher Song Yawen.

As knowledge about Western society increased in the late 19th century, China's elite came to see the importance of establishing institutions for public education, such as libraries, zoos and museums, he says.

Scholar Xu Jiyu first introduced the idea of having a museum in China, in 1848.

In his book Brief Accounts of My Overseas Journey, Xu recounts his impressions of museums in Spain, Portugal and Germany.

In the following decades, many Chinese scholars and officials who traveled to Europe wrote essays and books about their exciting experiences at museums.

In 1898, reformist scholar Kang Youwei of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) proposed to establish museums, galleries, zoos and concert halls as part of what he called "an ideal society".

In 1905, Zhang Jian, one of modern China's pioneering entrepreneurs, submitted a proposal to the Qing court about the "establishment of public museums in China as complementary facilities to educations at schools and colleges".

From 1868-1911, Catholic missionaries from France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany built China's first museums in Shanghai, Tianjin and Jinan in Shandong province.

The first privately owned museum, built with local investment, came into being in 1905 in Nantong, Jiangsu province.

The man behind the museum was entrepreneur Zhang Jian who persuaded villagers to relocate and tear down more than 36 houses and remove 29 tombs to create room for the museum.

"It is one of the country's earliest nonprofit undertakings to offer the general public access to knowledge about China's history and culture," says researcher Li Shouyi.

In the following decade, Chinese businessmen, scholars and officials built a couple of private museums in Beijing, Tianjin, and Tai'an in Shandong province. After 1906, the Qing government's Education Ministry began monitoring the operations of museums and libraries across the country.

On July 9, 1912, the Education Ministry of the Republic of China set up a preparatory office to construct the nation's first history museum - also the first museum with direct governmental support.

The project came to a halt between 1914-16 due to social turbulence. In July 1918, the National History Museum moved from Guo Zi Jian (Imperial Academy) to the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City.

In November 1920, the museum opened in Beijing and began conducting field work, sending archaeologists to the provinces of Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and other regions to acquire cultural relics.

By 1924, the National History Museum had a collection of 208,173 cultural relics in 26 categories and opened for public viewing on Aug 1 the same year.

In July 1936, the Chinese government decided to evacuate cultural relics to southern provinces to avoid damage caused by the invading Japanese army.

In August 1945, after China won the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the National History Museum resumed operations in Beijing.

The museum continued to function 10 years after the founding of New China.

The complex, originally occupied by the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of Chinese Revolution, on the eastern side of Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, opened in 1959 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.

It was considered an icon of Maoist-era socialist design and symbolic of the former Soviet Union's influence on Chinese art and architecture.

The two museums merged into the National Museum of China in 2003.

"The imposing structure, well-equipped, and with a wonderful collection of well-trained staff, and superb services, has become a calling card for a nation with a 5,000-year-old civilization," said Cultural Minister Cai Wu at the museum's opening ceremony in March.

"It is a monument to China's cultural prosperity and a symbol of national pride."

Since the renovation was completed in March, the museum has been the focus of several controversies.

On April 21, 2011 a 9.5-meter bronze statue of Confucius that was unveiled months earlier in a small square on the museum grounds was moved indoors after scholars questioned whether Confucianism was representative of the values and ideals of modern China.

In June and September 2011, the museum was criticized for putting on two heavily hyped exhibitions for luxury brands Louis Vuitton and Bulgari.

The museum's deputy director Chen Lusheng, however, responded: "The staging of such international exhibitions goes in tandem with the museum's mission to present China's history, art and culture to the world while introducing art and culture from other civilizations to the Chinese public."

Contact the writer at zhulinyong@chinadaily.com.cn.