故宮, 翠玉白菜

Dad and I intended to go to the 大英博物館250年收藏展 in 故宮博物院. As we approached the museum, we found that more and more people were heading for the museum. The traffic was jammed around the museum. When we got there, we saw long lines of people. One winding line was for entering the British Museum Exhibition. Another line was for buying the tickets. Both lines were really long. One museum worker announced that it will take 20 minutes to buy the tickets then line up for 60 minutes before entering the museum.

We tried to figure out how to get into the queue for the tickets. There were lines of people everywhere but we could see the end of the line. After tracing the line for a while. We finally saw the end of it. No, it definitely will not take only 20 minutes.

In the end, we decided to go to see the regular museum exhibition instead. The long queues were discouraging. I was more concerned that we wouldn't be able to comfortably see the items if it was too crowded inside, though.

There were many people at the regular museum exhibition too, but much less than the other one. The museum had been reburbished. It just re-opened recently. It looked more modern. We felt that there were less items on display, though. Many exhibition rooms were closed.

Due to the recent appearances on TV news, many visitors were interested in seeing 翠玉白菜. While we were in the museum, we could here somebody mention 翠玉白菜 every 2 minutes or so. There were actually signs at various spots that says 翠玉白菜 is in Room 30x. Many people did gather in that room. A crowd flocked around 翠玉白菜. I guess that's kind of a must-do for the tourists.
Although we had seen it before, I was still awed by the creativity and craft when I saw it.

It's interesting to go to a musuem to brush up my Chinese history once in a while. Hope there will be less people next time so we can easily go to the British Museum Exhibition.