Weekly culture & leisure guide (New Year Special)

Spice up Spring Festival holiday with a tour of National Museum of China

To celebrate the Year of the Rat, the National Museum of China opened a New Year special exhibition Thursday, showcasing 37 selected works with auspicious motifs from the museum's collection as well as more than 120 Spring Festival couplets and paintings. More interactive activities are said to be held to let visitors enjoy the holiday atmosphere more.

In addition to this show, more than 20 other exhibitions are open to the public during the holiday, including High Mountains, Broad Paths, a large-scale exhibition elaborating on the formation and evolution of Confucianism and its extensive influence; A Literary Peak of Eternity, an exhibition centered on the eternal charm of the 18th-century Chinese masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber; and Heavenly Beauty, Emerging Rays, a display of nearly 200 objects revealing the emergence of pottery-making in Northwest China’s Gansu province some 8,000 years ago, and celebrating the advanced civilizations that produced the pottery and thrived along the Yellow River.

The museum will be closed on Chinese New Year's Eve (Jan 24) and will stay open from Jan 25-30.

If you go:

9:00-17:00, No 16 East Chang'an Avenue, Dongcheng district, Beijing (on the east side of Tian'anmen Square) 010-65116400北京東城區東長安街16號天安門廣場東側, 國家博物館