阅读理解Thanks to its rich history, the Palace Museum is home to over 1.86 million cultural relics(文物). However. there aren't enough exhibition spaces for them. It's said that only 10,000 cultural relics can be shown to the public each year. That's why the Palace Museum decided to build a new branch.
The plan to build a branch in the north of the museum was first made in 2013. After years of preparation, the building work finally started in 2022 December. The branch is located in Xiyuhe,a village in Haidian District, Beijing. It's over 30 kilometres away from the Palace Museum, about an hour's drive.
With an area of more than 100,000 square metres, the northern branch will have an exhibition space of 60,000 square metres for cultural relics and over 35,000 square metres of restoration space. More than 20,000 to 30,000 relics could be shown in the new branch every year, and it will offer larger and better-equipped spaces to objects like silk pieces, which require greater attention.
"We'll have a much larger space to meet people's expectations and improve our ability to show ancient Chinese civilization(文明),"Mr. Wang, director of the Palace Museum, said in an interview. The new branch is expected to open to the public in 2025 and further meet the different needs of the public in the near future.
"We are going to build the branch into a museum inheriting(继承) ancient classics and leading the future at the same time, "said Mr. Zhang, chief architect(首席建筑师) of the new museum. It's believed that both the Palace Museum and the new branch will protect and carry forward the fine traditional Chinese culture. The completion of the new branch will provide new development space for the Palace Museum, making Beijing the national cultural centre and a "City of Museums".