Since the Chinese State Administration of Radio Film and Television had just come out with new guidelines against time travel dramas, saying that history should not be treated so “frivolously” I decided to pay a visit to the newly reopened National Museum of China. The museum is located across the huge Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. The square is huge, built to house a million people hailing the communist leaders in the former imperial palace. After the people demonstrated against the Party in 1989 it has been difficult to access the square as freely as before. I have a hard enough time finding my way into the museum, hoping first that the VIP entrance close to the subway exit would be open now not just for military and cadres. But no, I have to walk all the way round, passing makeshift constructions cordoning off the square and the ever present groups of marching men in green uniform, just to find a small handwritten sign saying the tickets are all sold out. Ignoring this I labyrinthine my way to a very inconspicuous entrance. The ticket is just thirty yuan and I am soon standing in the greatest room I have ever experienced. The building is higher then any cathedral, held up by pillars that would have made Mussolini green of envy.
Tired by the flu I head for the nearest escalator and on my way ask two of the numerous young staff, where in this huge history museum I can find the exhibition rooms for pre-modern China. They reply there is no such section. Ok I think, understanding perfectly well that all the young people working here are employed because they do not know anything on history. I decide to find the exhibit myself. Stupid idea! The reason for constructing this new museum was reportedly that the leadership felt Beijing was lacking the cultural patina of other world cities like Paris and New York. A couple of calls to the Met and Louvre and the planners realise they could create the largest museum in the world. After walking up and down I realise however that the world’s greatest museum is close to empty. No wonder the entrance was only thirty yuan! But God is it big museum running around trying to find anything of interest.
When I finally had made it to one of the two small rooms on Chinese history I find myself surrounded by wooden Bodhisattvas - god of compassion. Now I was close to fainting of fatigue and fever. I asked one of the ten or so staff where to sit. I had not seen a single chair or sofa anywhere in the building. There is nowhere to sit I was told. But, I do not feel well, I have to rest for a while I protested feebly. At the café he replied, in the basement, you can sit. This was third floor, so I decided to sit instead on one of the many fire posts in the room. Suddenly all ten staff came running towards me as if I had just ruined the Chinese Mona Lisa. I could not sit there, totally forbidden. I tried to argue that I was ill and just needed five minutes but was chased away. Staggering out of the room I kind of collapsed on the floor. Right away I had four staff on me saying I had to get up. Their stout early forties boss pointed to his head indicating I was crazy. And, of course, in a People’s Republic where political dissidents and discontent people are put in mental hospitals I certainly belong to the madmen. However a young employee, not more then seventeen, rushed to the office and got out a stool for me. A real Guanyin of mercy, I pray he will keep his job despite this serious breach of protocol.
After such a parable on contemporary Chinese civility, I decided it was time to check out the Enlightenment exhibition. Two small rooms were filled with paintings on European eighteenth century nobility but very little on the actual enlightenment: Nothing on revolutionary ideas, freedom, democracy, equality, the French Revolution or human rights. The main introductory sign to the exhibition said that the enlightenment put focus on man (I always believed that was the Renaissance). Besides a portrait of Fredric the Great, I found the only other reference really to the enlightenment. It explained the good Frederick practised enlightenment “from above”!
That night someone mysteriously removed (arrested?) the huge statue of Confucius from Tiananmen Square where he had been fronting the museum for four months.
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