A mix of science and tradition helps restore relics in China’s Forbidden City

It is a highly technical function in looking like a laboratory than a museum: A piece of a shining roof tile from the prohibited city of Beijing is analyzed in a state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction machine that produces images, which are then projected on the computer screen.
There is a dark area on the surface of the piece being tested that the restorers want to be considered. Their purpose is to better preserve artifacts on the seat of power for the former house of the emperors of China and for hundreds of years.
“We want to learn what is black material,” Kang Baciang said, one of the restaurars in the complex, today a museum that attracts tourists from all over the world. “Whether it is atmospheric sediment or the result of adequate change from within.”
Around 150 workers of the team fused to clean up scientific analysis and traditional techniques, patch up and otherwise to revive over 1.8 million residues in the collection of museums.
They include scroll painting, calligraphy, bronze, ceramic – and, some unexpectedly, ornate ancient clocks that were gifted to emperors by early European visitors.
Under the hall from the X-ray room, two other restores picked up holes on a panel of green silk patterned with Chinese character for “longevity”, in which a procedure called “Inpaining” was carefully added to the color.
This piece is believed to have a birthday gift for Maharani Dover Siksi in the 19th and 20th century.
Most of the work is laborious and monotonous – and it takes months to complete.
“I do not have big dreams of protecting traditional cultural heritage, which people talk about,” Wang Naan said, one of the restaurants. “I just enjoy the feeling of achievement when an ancient piece is fixed.”
Now a major tourist destination at the center of Beijing, the prohibited city is the name that was given by foreigners in royal times as the entry was forbidden to most outsiders. It is formally known as the Palace Museum.
Many of its treasures were taken in a hurry during World War II to stop them from falling into the hands of the attacker Japanese army. During a civil war that brought the Communist Party to power in 1949, defeated nationalists took the most prized pieces in Taiwan, where they are now placed in the National Palace Museum.
The Palace Museum of Beijing has since rebuilt its collection.
Queen, head of the conservation department of the museum, said that the restoration technology has also developed, although the old methods remain the foundation of the work.
When we preserve an ancient piece, we “protect the cultural values ​​that carries it,” Qu said. “And this is our ultimate goal.”