A call to preserve China's historic relics in specialized local museums

Editor's Note: Many of China's primitive villages and historic streets are at the risk of disappearing and it is very necessary to build smallsized museums to protect them, said Feng Jicai, the Chairman of Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society, during his recent visit to the former residence of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, the famous couple of architects.
 
In recent years, on my tour to many places I found that many primitive villages and historic blocks looked sound and intact, but when I approached and entered them, I was met with disfigured furniture, little historic relics and hardly anything that was related to Chinese culture. This phenomenon I fear constitutes the Achilles' heel of the protection of primitive villages and historic blocks in China.
 
We cannot lose witnesses to our history. Historic villages and architecture should not be reduced to shells without souls. The way I see it, the most straightforward and effective way of protecting them is to set up small-sized museums.
 
While large museums represented by the National Museum of China and the Palace Museums are the reflections of the culture and history of a nation, small museums target specific regions and cultural areas, which boast two main features – locality and specialty.
 
Large museums are well known for their vast collections whereas small museums are capable of presenting specific relics to audiences in a most meticulous way.
 
In my opinion, for each cultural heritage there should be a particular museum. Currently, the number of intangible cultural heritage items qualified as “State-level” totals more than 1,000. If the same number of specially designed small museums is put in place to give a panorama of these cultural remains, they would play a key role in efforts to protect China's heritage. 

 
Small museums mainly receive local people and visitors from other areas. Museums, large or small, take it as their most important mission to pass culture onto future generations. In this sense, small museums serve as a conclusion of regional history as well as a base to accumulate and further promote regional spirit. Thus, they are a reflection of not only the foundation of the new culture construction campaign unfolding in the countryside but also the richness and uniqueness of urban culture.
 
Small museums can be operated by private investors and sponsored by the government or vice versa, or even built totally out of non-governmental donations or private funds. Individual collectors enthusiastic about building museums should be encouraged. Funds for running a museum should come from diversified sources, such as local finance, corporate sponsorship and tourism construction funds.
 
Consultation with scholars and experts is highly necessary so that these museums can be set up in a scientific way and with more depth. And only by doing so, can these museums truly be of historical record and cultural accumulation. In poor areas, a handful of rooms are enough, mainly used for the rescue collection of a variety of cultural relics, such as distinctive furniture, ancient farm tools, historical documents, cultural implements and other kinds of cultural objects.
 
Aiming to highlight regional and professional characteristics, small museums should be distinctive and diverse instead of being confined to a uniform style. For example, in Beijing, there should be courtyard museums. Moreover, some former places of residence of significant people in history should also be converted to museums to preserve their importance.
 
This does not mean that we must keep everything that ever existed in museums. Only the essence of history deserves a place; it presents not a burden but a great treasure.
 

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