Forbidden City museum restores vandalised centuries-old artefact to - almost - former glory
The Palace Museum in Beijing has restored a 300-year-old bronze water vat vandalised by two visitors last month, and will make 100 copies of the vessel to store water in case of fire, The Beijing News reported on Sunday.
Museum director Shan Jixiang also said 2,500 people had been blacklisted since June for offences such as scalping tickets.
“If they are still allowed in, they may cause disruptions to other visitors,” Shan was quoted as saying.
Those on the blacklist will not be allowed to visit the museum for three years.
A furore erupted online last month after a photo was posted of names engraved on the vat at the musuem, also known as the Forbidden City.
Read more: Chinese internet users unimpressed by romantic vandals who etched their names on centuries-old relic
A trace of the graffiti could still be seen, the report said, and some visitors posed for selfies with the the vat.
Shan said the replica vats would be placed around the attraction and hold water in case of fire, just as the original vat was designed to do.
The museum has been been inundated with visitors since the National Day break got under way on Thursday. Its daily quota of 80,000 tickets was sold out within two hours on Friday.
Other tourists spots have been popular, with an estimated 88,000 people visiting the Beijing Zoo on Friday alone.
Two alpacas and two guanacos, a South American camelid, had to be removed from public display at the zoo yesterday morning after being overfed by the flood of visitors.
Zoo staff told the Legal Evening News that it was uncertain when these four animals would be back on view.
The zoo has three alpacas and three guanacos.
Staff have tried to prevent visitors feeding the animals by putting up notices throughout the facility and erecting a four-metre-high glass wall around the bear enclosure.
Another hugely popular holiday spot was Pingjiang county, in Hunan province, which boasts a 300-metre-long glass bridge.
The bridge is in the Shiniuzhai scenic area, which until Thursday had set its maximum daily intake at 10,000, Xinhua reported.
That all changed on Friday when double that number of people arrived to brave the two-metre wide bridge.
