Since May, the most prestigious guardian of China's ancient culture - the Forbidden City's Palace Museum - has been at the centre of controversy with irregularities and mismanagement exposed weekly, and with a string of scandals that are still unfolding.
In the latest scandal, Beijing Times reported yesterday that Palace Museum officials have admitted that more than 100 ancient books supposed to be kept at the museum couldn't be found during a seven-year audit of 200,000 titles.
Someone claiming to be a staff member at the museum sent a letter to Beijing Times claiming that vice-curator Chen Lihua had ordered the museum staff not to find out how the books could have been lost, and that nobody had been held accountable for their disappearance.
In a separate scandal, Chen Bingcai, a former official at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, accused the museum on his qq.com microblog of evading tax on ticket revenues from exhibitions held outside the Palace Museum. He said tickets for those exhibitions were not formal tickets authorised by the tax authorities, suggesting the exhibition operators tried to pocket the revenue without paying tax.
The Palace Museum officials said that the National Museum of China, also on Tiananmen Square, was responsible for those exhibitions and that the Forbidden City had nothing to do with them, a claim denied by the National Museum.
Earlier this month, the Palace Museum officials who manage the Forbidden City had to endure humiliating accusations that have undermined decades of public faith in their ability and integrity.