Capital Museum 首都博物馆
复兴门外大街16号
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s coverage of West of the Imperial City
The Capital Museum has grown up from a small showing in side halls at the Confucius Temple to occupy a modern Sino-French-designed facility (the French architect, Jean-Marie Duthilleul, tends to get overlooked in Chinese materials). It introduced international environmental standards to Běijīng; even the Louvre and the British Museum have been willing to loan temporary exhibitions here. This is where unsuspecting Chinese have had Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst sprung upon them, too, albeit the less excitable works: no stained underwear please, we’re Chinese.
That’s ex-president Jiāng Zémín’s calligraphy on the sign outside, but other than that this is a museum of which any other capital would be proud. Physically well ahead of the National Museum and, although its collections of antiquities are not as good, its presentation of Běijīng’s history is entertainingly done.
Visiting foreign exhibitions are in a hall to the right, with locally sourced temporary displays (retrospectives of Chinese artists, and others) and the largest of the museum’s many bookshops below in the basement. Upper floors to the right hold the permanent exhibition, and a second multistorey spiral-shaped and vaguely New York Guggenheim-like area holds assorted art, best seen by starting at the top and working down.
Presentation standards are high (although the supply of English is sometimes restricted to labels) and include audio-visual and diorama elements as well as traditional cabinet displays. Although few of the 3000-odd (out of a rumoured 200,000) artefacts on display are of the highest quality, this is overall a pleasing experience, not least because it is one of the few museums in China that admits its use of replicas, labelling them as such.
The 2nd floor deals with the early development of Běijīng, with assorted furniture, maps, tomb figurines, calligraphy, bronzes, and ceramics, and an outer wall display keeping pace with haphazard comparisons with what was happening in the rest of the world such as the development of Stephenson’s Rocket and Birmingham’s (!) industrial revolution. Marco Polo’s presence in China is treated as historical, although it’s a matter of some doubt (see Was Polo Here?) and copies of modern editions of The Travels include one in French, published in Běijīng itself. There’s a diorama of the bustling pier at Jī Shuǐ Tán, which was linked to the Grand Canal, and rather entertainingly one that gives you the impression of standing on the city walls while Mongol hordes converge on the city, looking down on the armies approaching ant-like with fire being rained down on them. This is real Cecil B. de Mille (or Peter Jackson) material, although it forgets that Jīn dynasty walls would have been rather different from the brick-clad Míng-era ones shown here.
Early photographs show much of interest, including the long-vanished examination halls (and there’s a replica of the edict abolishing them in 1905), Qīng troops on their way to besiege the Legation Quarter, and the early railway stations at Zhèngyáng Mén.
The 3rd floor is about urban construction, the collision of sedentary farming and nomadic cultures that informed Běijīng’s location and its defensive design, water management (still an unsolved problem), and early architecture, complete with details such as bracket sets to examine close-up. There are rebuilds of hútòng house entrances showing those of different castes and different eras, models of early railway stations, and many early photographs of the Legation Quarter that can help with spotting and identifying the remaining buildings, and much more.
The upper floors have exhibitions of a digestible size showing ceramics, bronzes, and a two-storey replica of a Chinese opera theatre with video-projection taking the place of the real thing (and with the benefit that you can walk out any time you like). There are also displays on folk customs of all kinds, including cricket rearing and mahjong, traditional costume and first-night marital customs, tobacco pipes, and betrothal gifts. The hútòng are described as ‘the most impressive thing about Běijīng’, so it’s a shame their huddled housing is all being demolished.
There’s a tea shop (from ¥10 for a cup to hundreds for a pot) for regaining strength to tackle the spiral hall, with its floors of ancient stationery, jade, bronze, calligraphy, and painting, and a multi-media section on the ground floor.
▶ Shǒudū Bówùguǎn, Fùxīng Mén Wài Dàjiē 16, t 6337 0491, www.capitalmuseum.org.cn, 9am–4pm, Tue–Sun; plus Mon if pub hol
Free. nb Passport required. Special exhibitions are priced separately. Audio tours are ¥30; ¥100 deposit. m Mùxidì (Line 1) exit C1, walk E.
b to 木樨地东: 52, 99, 114电车, 308, 337.
Turning right (east) out of the building and right down Bái Yún Lù (白云路) leads in about 20 minutes to the city’s principal daoist temple, the Báiyún Guàn and on south to the Tiānníng Sì Pagoda. One metro stop or a short walk west lies the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution, although to go there straight from the Capital Museum is likely to produce considerable culture shock.
Next in West of the Imperial City: Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution
Previously: Línglóng Gōngyuán
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
