ARTS / CULTURE & LEISURE
Nearly 5,000 events in China to celebrate Cultural and Natural Heritage Day
Published: Jun 03, 2021 06:38 PM
Model of the Times photo exhibition kicks off in Beijing as CPC marks 100th anniversary Photo: Li Hao/GT

Model of the Times photo exhibition kicks off in Beijing as CPC marks 100th anniversary Photo: Li Hao/GT

Over 4,900 events will be held across China to celebrate 2021's Cultural and Natural Heritage Day, China's National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) announced on Thursday. 

The 2021 Cultural and Natural Heritage Day, whose main venue will be in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, will mainly focus on revolutionary cultural relics related to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) as well as the scientific and technological innovation in the field of cultural relics, Guan Qiang, deputy director of the NCHA, said at a press conference.

The opening ceremony of 2021's Cultural and Natural Heritage Day will be held at the Chongqing Hongyan Revolution History Museum, a national first-class museum, on June 12. The event will be held throughout the month.   

Xing Jun, deputy director of the Chongqing Culture and Tourism Development Committee, said that the museum has over 100,000 cultural relics, and the spirit of Hongyan, a small village that was the seat of the Southern Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, is one of the most important revolutionary spirits cultivated by the CPC during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45). 

Meanwhile, the Three Gorges Cultural Relics Science and Technology Protection Base will also open to the public in June. 

"The base will meet the urgent need for the conservation and restoration of cultural relics unearthed at the Three Gorges, and improve the infrastructure conditions for the restoration of cultural relics in Chongqing," said Xing, adding that total investment in the project is about 161 million yuan ($25.2 million) and will cover an area of 8,400 square meters including a construction area of about 18,000 square meters. 

During the one-month-long event, the National Palace Museum Cultural Relics South Migration Memorial Hall in Chongqing will open to the public. 

Media reported that after the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the committee at Beijing's Palace Museum decided to move the collection within the Forbidden City to Shanghai. The collection was later moved to a cultural relics warehouse in Nanjing. In 1946, 3,694 boxes of cultural relics were moved to Chongqing. After the end of the war, most of them returned to the Palace Museum in Beijing, and over 2,000 boxes were shipped to the island of Taiwan, where they remain in Taipei's National Palace Museum. 

According to Xing, after the memorial hall is completed and opened, themed exhibitions and activities will be held so that more people can learn about the history of the Forbidden City and cultural heritage conservation.

Lu Qiong, an NCHA official, told the Global Times on Thursday that besides Chongqing, other locations across the country will also hold more than 4,900 events including more than 1,000 online events. For example, the China National Silk Museum and Dunhuang Research Academy will co-hold an online exhibition about the history of silk in Dunhuang in Northwest China's Gansu Province.