The Palace Museum in Beijing

Established in 1925, the Palace Museum in Beijing is located inside the Forbidden City. It is a comprehensive museum based on the imperial collections of Ming and Qing dynasties and the largest art museum of ancient Chinese culture. The vast treasure of imperial collections makes it one of the most prestigious museums in China and the world.

The museum holds more than 1.5 million precious cultural relics. Highly diversified, the collections of the museum have high historical value. Rare artifacts of different historical periods of China are kept in the museum. Take bronze wares for example, the museum stores more than 15,000 articles, of which around 10,000 date back to the pre-Qin Dynasty period (before B.C. 221) and about 1,600 have ancient inscriptions on. These three numbers are the largest both at home and abroad.

The Beijing museum also boasts many palace-related articles, such as daily utensils or adornments of royal families. In addition, it houses a good number of timekeeping devices and astronomical equipment representing the scientific and technological achievements of the Qing Dynasty and the cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world at that time.

Other valuable treasures and artworks created in different periods in China's history can also be found in the museum, such as exquisite jade or stone carvings, ancient seals, porcelains, silk, embroideries, lacquer wares, enamels, gold, silver, wood or bamboo carvings, writing or painting outfits, and furniture from Ming and Qing dynasties.

The relics are displayed in the museum in two ways. One is restoring the display in the halls and the rooms of the palace to their original state, and the other is setting up special exhibition halls to show the treasures to the public on a regular basis.

The masterpieces kept in the museum include bronze drums from the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.) and the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), the best-known painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival by famous painter Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145) of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), 25 royal seals of the Qing Dynasty known as the "25 Treasures," and costumes of emperors and empresses in Ming and Qing dynasties.

The Palace Museum in Taipei

The palace museum in Taipei, known as the "National Palace Museum," was completed in 1965. The design is in the style of an ancient Chinese palace, featuring a glazed tiled roof, light yellow walls, white marble railings and bluestone stairs, simple but elegant.

It has a collection of more than 650,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks, over 90 percent of which came from the Forbidden City and other ancient imperial places on the mainland. The collection of ancient books and documents is the most important section of the museum. For example, the museum has the relatively complete set of Si Ku Quan Shu, or the Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature, compiled in 1772-82. Only four sets of the series are now in China.

The museum also boasts a collection of ancient paintings and calligraphic works, with more than 9,400 masterpieces, most of which were created in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). One of the masterpieces kept in the museum is the only authentic calligraphic work of Wang Xizhi (303-361), one of the greatest calligraphers in China, who is seen as the sage of calligraphy.

The museum has more than 20,000 pieces of inscriptions on tortoise shells or animal bones, ranking second in the world in this field. It is also home to some 20,000 porcelain pieces from different historical periods, from earthernware to porcelain in Ming and Qing dynasties, topping others in the world in terms of the number and quality of the collection of ancient Chinese porcelain.

The most well-known treasure of the Taipei Museum is the Jade Cabbage, a cabbage carved out of a natural white and green piece of jade. Other treasures of the museum include the Meat-Shaped Stone, a stone-carving work whose natural color and texture are identical to the Dongpo Meat, a popular Chinese dish. A 54-cm tall and 34.5-kg bronze vessel, called Maokung Ting, is another priceless cultural relic kept in the Taipei museum. Unearthed in 1850, it dates back to the ninth century B.C. It bears ancient inscriptions of 497 words, representing the longest text on unearthed bronze wares of Western Zhou (1097-771 B.C.), the third slavery dynasty of China noted for its production and development of the bronze civilization.

As the Taipei museum was specially built to house cultural relics, the display of the museum, designed to fit the need of visitors, is different from the Beijing museum, which was originally a royal palace and thus not ideal for display. There are some display halls in the museum to show cultural relics according to different themes or types, such as the halls for bronze wares, halls for porcelains and halls for jade wares. The museum regularly displays around 5,000 pieces of its collection perennially, and the exhibits are changed every three months.

(Sources: dpm.org.cn and documentary "The Palace Museum of Taipei" produced by China Central Television)