A culture and arts exhibition featuring the country's ethnic cultural heritage made its debut at the China Millennium Altar exhibition hall in Beijing at last weekend.
The exhibition, which will run until March 20, is divided into five parts: calligraphy and paintings, costumes, music instruments, masks and relic archives.
More than 100 paintings and calligraphy works are being shown and among them is a calligraphy piece by the late Kuomintang general Zhang Xueliang (1898-2001).
The four characters tian you zhong hua (Heaven bless the Chinese nation) display Zhang's longing for the unification and invigoration of the motherland.
The second and most colorful section shows costumes of ethnic groups. Renowned for fine craftsmanship, appealing colors and unique styles, the costumes provide a window to the aesthetics, ethics and religious characteristics of different ethnic groups.
There are about 1,000 costumes on display, which were selected from collections of the Nationalities Culture Palace in Beijing.
There are also 500 musical instruments widely used during ethnic people's daily lives and on social occasions.
Those on show include stringed instruments played by northern ethnic people like the matou qin -- a bow instrument with a scroll carved like a horse's head, belonging to the Mongolian people -- and percussion and wind instruments from the south.
Masks are another attraction in the exhibition.
Originating in the pre-history period, masks were used by people to transform their personalities and communicate with the forces of nature, which they believed were supreme beings. They still exist in the life of nearly 40 ethnic groups in about 20 provinces and regions.
Relics and archives shown during the exhibition include a map displaying the three routes that Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) officials took to Tibet, an imperial edict to Dalai by Emperor Qianlong (reigned 1711-99) and Qing Dynasty imperial documents recording the images of different ethnic groups.
The Nationalities Culture Palace, Academy of Ethnic Arts, Chinese People's Military Museum and several other institutions have contributed to the event.
"Every piece shown here is selected with care, demonstrating the richness and uniqueness of Chinese culture," said Yong Jirong, vice-curator of the Nationalities Culture Palace.
Guo Zhengying, another deputy curator at the museum, said the exhibition was a crystallization of national strength as six institutions from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan were sponsoring the event.
(China Daily March 16, 2003)
