A bird's-eye view of the Hangzhou branch of the National Archives of Publications and Culture Photo: Xia Yang
Inside Wenrun Ge, the Hangzhou branch of the National Archives of Publications and Culture Photo: Xia Yang
By Ye Qingyang
The National Archives of Publications and Culture was officially opened on July 30th. It consists of a headquarters in Beijing and three branches in Hangzhou，Xi'an and Guangzhou respectively. Viewed as the national resource repository and seed bank for the Chinese culture, the new institution will play a full role of preserving and carrying on the Chinese civilization.
National archives
What is the so-called "national archives"? To put it simply, the Chinese archives include all kinds of resources that bear the prints of both the ancient and modern Chinese culture, ranging from ancient books and newspapers, bronzes, food stamps to tapes and health codes. In short, any cultural media you can think of is basically considered as a resource of the archives.
So what are the functions of the Hangzhou branch?
Besides its exhibition halls, libraries and museums for displaying and preserving the archives, it also assumes the responsibility of academic communications of the Jiangnan culture. Up to now, the Hangzhou branch has received a total of one million important items donated by the local bureaus, government offices and private collectors， such as a bronze sword from the Warring States period, The Communist Manifesto in various languages, and so on.
Why was it built in Hangzhou?
The Hangzhou branch is named Wenrun Ge（in Chinese:文润阁）, which literally means "culturally nourishing" in Chinese.
Located near the Archaeological Ruins of the Liangzhu City, it was designed by Wang Shu, the first Chinese winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, with an architecture style of the "modernized Song dynasty charm".
"In history, Hangzhou was once the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, so that we took the Song Dynasty garden design as the background and constructed it with modern materials. The biggest challenge we faced was how to materialize the landscape paintings into such a large scale of architecture to better demonstrate the classic charm of the Song Dynasty," Wang Shu said.
As to why Hangzhou becomes one of the branches, the reasons lay in several aspects. First, Hangzhou is located in the east of the country and has been of great importance since the ancient times. Second, Hangzhou is one of the birthplaces of the Chinese civilization, adding more advantages to its location as a gift of history. Third, the ancient Liangzhu City was proved in archeology as the home to rice planting some 5,000 years ago.
A new landmark of Hangzhou
Undoubtedly, Wenrun Ge has become a new cultural landmark in Hangzhou with its unique combination of the traditional and modern cultural collections. This opening exhibition covers four themes, the Zhejiang political achievements, Jiangnan culture, Zhejiang cultural researches and heroes in Zhejiang history. A digital gallery featuring VR (virtual reality) technology has also made its debut, visualizing jade Cong, Longjing trademark, The Communist Manifesto, and etc.
Reservations to visit the venue can be made either by phone or through the WeChat official account "Hangzhou National Archives".
More national treasures in HZ
Besides the National Archives of Publications and Culture, Hangzhou is also home to various national-level museums that are worth visiting.
For example, the China National Silk Museum is the world's largest of the kind, focusing on the history of silk in China, as well as all kinds of beautiful silk products. The Hangzhou Cuisine Museum has a display area, where a large number of textual and photographic historical materials, ancient and modern cultural relics are on display to sort out the heritage and development of the Hangzhou cuisine from the Liangzhu culture to the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Visitors can practice on cooking Hangzhou style dishes.
Aside from these, the China national museums of tea, of water, of wetland, of knives, scissors and swords, of fan, of umbrella and of cartoon and animations have all proved themselves as cultural highlands based in Hangzhou, all of which are admissions free and are available to reserve online.