Palace Museum to restore imperial Spring Festival celebration scenes
"The theme of Chinese New Year is to bid farewell to the old year and ring in the new year," said Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum. In the exhibition, the audience can see not only familiar scenes and objects in their daily life, but also novel discoveries.
On the stairs of Qianqing Gong (the Palace of Heavenly Purity), tall palace lamps are lit up. It marks the first time that the Palace Museum has restored the Sky Lantern, a type of small hot-air balloon that originated in China centuries ago, and the Wanshou Lantern, used to pray for longevity, as both had disappeared for nearly 200 years. Since Emperor Daoguang (1782-1850) abolished the celebration in 1840, the prosperous scene had disappeared for centuries, and the relevant relics had been scattered everywhere and gradually became unknown.
