The Palace Museum, Beijing [Photo/Wiki Commons]

The Palace Museum announced a trial project in an effort to limit and divide visitor flow, on July 1.

The Palace Museum has established the first Wednesday of every month during its off-season from 2014 to 2015 as a free open day with tentative special themes to help visitors avoid rush hour while showing concern to special groups, thus carrying forward the public benefit of the Palace Museum and training visitors to develop the habit of making prior appointments.

Currently, six free open days have been set for November 5, December 3 in 2014, January 7, February 4, March 4 and April 1 in 2015.

Each month is designed to target a special group. The groups include teachers, medical workers, volunteers, military personnel in active service, police officers and university students. The groups will be required to make an appointment in order to visit the Palace Museum. The ordered headcounts are restricted to under 10,000 for every free day. Meanwhile, visitor services for the public will be conducted as usual.

The museum will also try half price tickets available after 2:00 pm during September 12-14, 2014.

The museum is planning to carry out general investigations, register records and image collections over a three-year period to coordinate with the first movable cultural relics census throughout China.

It’s expected that the collections at the museum will cross the 2 million mark after the general investigation. It will involve 14 types of movable cultural relics which have yet to receive proper attention, including oracle bones, royal drafts of Emperor Qian Long and models of epistolary art from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Some collections, which do not conform to the collection scope of the Palace Museum such as international presents, will be approved for removal from the list of the museum’s collections.

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