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New gallery at Britain’s Manchester Museum charts China’s historic links with what Lonely Planet calls ‘one of the coolest cities in the world’
- Manchester Museum’s new China Gallery celebrates historic links between the country and the city, with exhibits on sharing technology, stories and even animals
- Funded by a donation from a Hong Kong businessman, among its features is a famous 18th century scroll and a night sky installation about Chinese Valentine’s Day
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When the Qing dynasty’s Kangxi Emperor turned 60, in 1713, Beijing played host to a huge festival.
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A parade of decorated elephants, officials looking officious, drummers thumping dragon drums, parents lifting their children to see, other people not paying the least attention as they negotiate over baskets: so many aspects of everyday life in China could be seen in the streets of the Qing capital that day.
We know all this because of two 12-metre printed scrolls that, placed end to end, provide remarkable detail of how the people of that city lived and walked and celebrated and did business more than three centuries ago.
There must have been several copies – produced later by artist Wang Yuanqi – but they are rare now, and two are in the possession of the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester in the UK.
In stages, they are being displayed as part of an ambitious new China Gallery at the Manchester Museum, which reopened in the northern English city last month after being closed for 18 months.
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The first scroll, augmented by a giant-scale detailed reproduction on the long wall behind, matched with early tobacco pipes, jade hairpins and other suitable artefacts shown in the original, will be unwound by a librarian every few months so different scenes can be seen (and the paper and ink protected from light damage), but at this rate it could be 2024 before we even get to the emperor, who turns up about six metres in.
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