New National Museum of China opens to public

The photo shows the inside the newly-built National Museum of China, which opened on March 1.

After three years of repairs and renovations, the new building of the National Museum of China was formally opened to the public today, and it is now the largest of its kind in the world.
The new museum, which covers an area of 200,000 square meters with a 20,000-square-meter green roof, required investments totaling 2.5 billion yuan and is expected to receive more than 10 million visitors annually.
The newly-built National Museum of China possesses more than 1 million cultural and historic relics and has three floors of north-south symmetrical exhibition halls. It has 49 exhibition rooms, each of which is 1,000 square meters wide and 40 meters tall. The splendidly decorated art gallery along the north-south axis has a length of 330 meters.

A visitor views an exhibit at the newly-expanded National Museum of China in Beijing, capital of China, March 1, 2011. China's NationalMuseum, lying to the east of Tian'anmen Square, reopened Tuesday after more than three years' renovation. (Photo by Xinhua)

Du Haijiang, the vice curator of the museum, said that all theaters and cinemas in the museum are to sell tickets separately, which allows audiences to watch shows while the museum is open during the day and at night.
In addition to new hardware, the new museum is also introducing software innovations. The curator said the museum is collaborating with telecom operators to provide a multimedia client on mobile phones, which allows visitors to use automatic self-guided tour services. Visitors can play audio and videos as well as acquire information access over cell phones after installing the client on their phones.
The museum opened to the public at 2 p.m. by presenting "The Revival," a large-scale theme exhibition that shows how Chinese people have resisted in the abyss of a semi-feudal society since the Opium War and found redemption in a prosperous, blessed, wealthy and harmonious society under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.