China

Cultural institutions

Beijing remains China’s cultural centre, home to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and numerous major research institutes. Notable repositories there include the National Library of China (housed in the Beijing Library), the Central Archives of China, and the libraries of the academy and of the city’s three major universities; libraries in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Changsha in Hunan province also have important collections. Paramount among China’s museums is the Palace Museum, which occupies the former imperial palaces of the Forbidden City in central Beijing.

Palace MuseumHall of Preserving Harmony (background) and the Hall of Central Harmony, Palace Museum, Beijing.Jacob Ehnmark

Chinese art and artifacts have found their way into various collections around the world. The most important collection of fine arts is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, the bulk of the superb traditional palace collection having been ferried across the Taiwan Strait when the Nationalists abandoned the mainland in 1948–49. Excellent collections of Chinese painting, calligraphy, and bronzes are also found in such museums as the Freer Gallery of Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Significant collections remain in major museums in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan.

Since the 1950s, new archaeological discoveries have filled China’s provincial and local museums with fabulous treasures, and new facilities have been constructed to study and display these artifacts. Especially notable is the renowned Qin tomb near Xi’an, in Shaanxi province, which preserves the life-size terra-cotta army of the first Qin emperor, Shihuangdi. The army, complete with soldiers, horses, and chariots, was discovered in 1974. Since then much of the site has been excavated, and many of its figures have been painstakingly removed and placed on public display.

Some of the excavated statues at the Qin tomb, Shaanxi province, China.© heckepics/iStock.com