Construction of the museum is to start next year and finish in 2003 with an estimated cost of 500 million yuan (US$60.24 million), said Liu Yuchuan, an official in charge of cultural artifact protection at the Three Gorges in Chongqing Municipality.

Covering a floor space of 40,000 square meters, the museum will be divided into five parts including exquisite ancient artifacts, folk art and customs, and the history and culture of Chongqing.

The Three Gorges Project, the largest of its kind in the world, will inundate 632 square km of land, under which numerous artifacts of historical interest are buried.

In a rush excavation, Chinese archeologists have unearthed more than 10,000 artifacts including 200 rare ones so far. Experts expect the number of cultural artifacts to be excavated from the dam area to be around 300,000 when the whole project is completed.

The museum will adopt the latest techniques to protect these rare cultural artifacts.

(Xinhua 11/30/2000)