An official with Shanghai Museum said the museum has hosted an increasing more exhibitions over the past five years, which clearly demonstrated a renaissance of Chinese culture, according to a Xinhua News Agency report on February 28.

Li Rongrong, director of the display arrangement department, told Xinhua that "in the past the museum just displayed cultural relics now it displays the culture." She said Shanghai Museum has created a general interest in things cultural by presenting big exhibitions every year.

In 2001 the "Wonders of Snowland - Tibet Cultural Relics" exhibition inspired by Potala Palace was held in Shanghai Museum. Li said they set up a Tibet-styled Buddha worshipping Hall with its walls covered in mural paintings of various subjects. Behind the 3.5-meter-tall statue of Buddha Maitreya were huge numbers of Buddhist scripture books which made visitors get a strong sense of the mystery and sacredness of Tibetan culture.

In 2002 the cultural relics from excavations at Cemetery of Marquis of Jin in Shanxi Province came to Shanghai Museum. The tombs of the Marquis, one of the most important discoveries in recent Chinese history, yielded a large number of bronzes and jade items. The find provided significant evidence to assist in putting together the picture of bronze and jade development during the Western Zhou Dynasty (1027 BC - 771 BC).

To properly show off the relics Li said they made the exhibition hall an old Shanxi residence which resembled the famed Qiao Family Compound. They had produced a delicately brick-carved lintel and a pair of big red lanterns which created a rich Chinese cultural atmosphere.

To impress visitors in 2003 with the national treasure "Chun Hua Ge Tie" rubbings from ancient tablets, Li said they had gone as far as to move a steel corridor forming part of a garden in southern Yangtze River area from Ming and Qing dynasties to Shanghai Museum's exhibition hall. 

In 2004 museum audiences were treated with 219 pieces of national treasure from the four dynasties of Zhou (1100 BC – 221 BC), Qin (221 BC – 206 BC), Han (206 BC – AD220) and Tang (618 – 907). Li's department re-constructed a terra-cotta warrior vault by using 16 bags of loess from the Northwest Plateau. When visitors arrived they found themselves in a very life-like scene of where archeologists first discovered the terra-cotta warriors. The 50-day exhibition attracted 300,000 people.

In 2005 Shanghai Museum embraced the treasures of the Forbidden City including "Ping Fu Tie," the earliest calligraphic works unearthed in China. This time the exhibition hall became a gallery exhibiting classic calligraphies and paintings -- using a long corridor in ancient architecture and adding appropriate music from Guqin.

Li has received many honors for her contributions to superbly designed cultural exhibitions. She was even invited to Musée du Louvre in France to give a presentation on the museum exhibiting of Chinese art to European professionals.

But Li said her greatest pleasure is to see audiences experience the beauty of ancient Chinese culture and get a feel the variety of civilizations which produced it.

"A great museum should constantly bring in all kinds of exhibitions," she commented.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Rui, March 11, 2006)