China is trying to improve the role of the country's more than
2,400 museums to make them more accessible to the
public, according to an ongoing national conference attended by
directors of provincial cultural relics departments
The museums, which are sponsored by the government, institutions
or individuals, hold nearly 10,000 exhibitions on different themes
annually. In all, they received about 150 million visitors each
year.
A big boost, thanks to government efforts, is that more and more
Chinese museums have stopped its long-time practice of selling
tickets to visitors.
Increasingly, critics had complained that the expensive charges
collected by educational and cultural institutions had become a big
financial burden on Chinese families.
To date, more than 1,000 museums and memorial institutions have
been officially made educational bases for patriotism and popular
science. They received 32 million underage visitors annually.
(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2007)