The 70-year-old Nanjing Museum is full of treasures and surprises. At the ongoing series of exhibitions to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding, the museum has displayed for the first time 40,000 imperial books from China's last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty.

It's the first time that the 40,000 Qing Dynasty books are being shown to the public after nearly 90 years of storage.

The royal books belong to four categories, namely, the Four Books and Five Classics, the Imperial Poetry Collections, the Tripitaka and Royal Documents. Back in the Qing Dynasty, only members of the imperial family were allowed to browse through these books.

To protect the precious books from decay and threats like worms, Nanjing Museum has carried out a thorough sterilization process before transferring the books to a new storage room.

The Exhibition of Selected Culture Relics is still underway. The Bronze Deer were made in the Warring States period some 2,300 years ago. This 12-joint jade piece was excavated in today's Zhejiang province, east China, at a neolithic site belonging to the Liangzhu Culture.

The selected works on display were chosen from over 400,000 cultural relics from the museum's collection and they cover all Chinese dynasties, right back to neolithic times

(CCTV.com November 3, 2003)