Beijing – It is a highly technical work in what looks more like a laboratory than a museum: a fragment of a glass roof tile of Prohibited city of Beijing is analyzed in a peak X -ray diffraction machine which produces images, which are then projected on computer screens.
The fragment examined has a dark area on its surface that restaurateurs want to understand. Their objective is to better preserve the artifacts of the sprawling imperial palace, the former house of Chinese emperors and its seat of power for hundreds of years.
“We want to learn what black equipment is,” said Kang Baoqiang, one of the restaurateurs of the complex, today a museum that attracts tourists from around the world. “Whether atmospheric sediments or the result of a substantial change from the inside.”
About 150 team workers merge scientific analysis and traditional techniques to clean, repair and otherwise revive the more than 1.8 million relics in the museum collection.
They include scrolling paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics – and, a little unexpectedly, ancient ornate clocks that were offered to emperors by first European visitors.
In the corridor of the X -ray room, two other restaurateurs distribute holes on a patterned green silk panel with the Chinese character for “longevity” sewn, carefully adding color to a process called “insistence”.
The play would have been a birthday present to the Empress Dowager Cixi, the power behind the throne at the end of the 19th and early 20th century.
Much of the work is laborious and monotonous – and takes months.
“I do not have big dreams of protecting the traditional cultural heritage that people speak of,” said Wang Nan, one of the restaurateurs. “I simply appreciate the feeling of success when an ancient piece is fixed.”
Now a Major tourist site in the heart of BeijingThe prohibited city is the name which was given to the sprawling complex by foreigners in the imperial era because the entry was prohibited for most foreigners. He is officially known as the Palace Museum.
Many of his treasures were hastily removed during the Second World War to prevent them from falling into the hands of the invasive Japanese army. During A civil war that brought the Communist Party to power in 1949defeated nationalists have taken many of the most popular pieces to Taiwanwhere they are now housed at the National Palace Museum.
The Palais de Beijin museum has since rebuilt its collection.
Restoration techniques have also evolved, said that Feng, head of the museum’s conservation service, although the old ways remain the basis of the work.
When we preserve an ancient part, we “protect the cultural values it transports,” said. “And that’s our ultimate goal.”
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Video producer Associated Press, Olivia Zhang, contributed to this report.