Written by: Shang Yankai
Translated by: Huang Shihui
Edited by: William Mosteller
Date: 2019-12-13
In 2020, Harbin Institute of Technology will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Next year will also mark the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City and the 95th anniversary of the Palace Museum. In this series of memorable historical moments, on the morning of December 12, the Special Performance of "Supporting Education and Bringing Culture and Art to the Campus"-2019 Forbidden City Series Activities at Harbin Institute of Technology and "100th Anniversary and 100-Person Forum" Launch Ceremony were held in Activity Center Room 301. Shan Jixiang, the sixth president of the Palace Museum and president of the Palace Museum College, Jiang Chunjie, vice president of the Heilongjiang Branch of the Bank of China, and An Shi, deputy secretary of the Party committee and vice president of the school, attended the event and unveiled the forum.
During the activity, Shan Jixiang was employed as the first guest of the forum and told the teachers and students the story of how, through promoting reform and innovation during his tenure as dean, sleeping cultural relics were made to come alive in order to show the world the excellent traditional Chinese culture. His humorous and funny language style won the warm applause of teachers and students many times.
Shan Jixiang served as director of the Palace Museum from January 2012 to April 2019. In his eyes, the Forbidden City is one of the world’s largest cultural sites, which is of course very important, but the extent to which these cultural heritage resources contribute to people's real life may be more important. He made up his mind to lead all the staff to carry out innovation, from the management concept to the internal and external environment, fulfilling the promise made in 2014 to "hand over a magnificent Forbidden City to the next 600 years in its entirety". Through the gradual expansion of opening up, the creation of the Digital Forbidden City, and the Smart Forbidden City, as well as the introduction of "explosive" cultural and creative products, the sleeping cultural relics have come to life and truly entered people's lives. At the same time, the unique charm of China's excellent traditional culture has been actively displayed to foreign leaders and the world.
In the lecture, he also noted Douban's documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" with a score of 9.4. What moved him was that young people, including college students, received the most praise for this slow-paced and cultural film, which brought about a continuous increase in the number of graduates who applied to the Palace Museum to repair cultural relics every year. He hopes that the majority of students would understand that the restoration and protection of cultural relics is a profession full of dedication before signing up. They need to stick to their posts in obscurity and be able to "choose one profession and live their whole lives".
At the end of the lecture, he quoted General Secretary Xi Jinping's important statements on the work of cultural relics, "to systematically sort out the traditional cultural resources so that the cultural relics collected in the forbidden palace, the heritage displayed on the vast land, and the words written in ancient books can all live", explaining what is a good state of cultural heritage protection and what is a good museum. He believes that the real power to protect cultural relics today lies with the public. Only when all people pay attention to cultural relics and protect them can cultural relics be safer. At the same time, a museum is good only when it makes people feel its existence in real life, when they can enter the museum in their leisure time and not want to leave, and when they continuously come back to the museum time and time again.
It is reported that this activity is jointly sponsored by the National Funding Management Center of the Ministry of Education, the Bank of China, and the Palace Museum, hosted by our school and the Heilongjiang Branch of the Bank of China, and organized and planned by Forum 201 of Harbin Institute of Technology. At the same time, as one of the 100-year-old series of activities, the "100-year Forum" will continue to invite academic leaders, business elites, and grassroots models to come to the school to exchange and share ideas with teachers and students, leading Harbin Institute of Technology at home and abroad to forge consensus, inherit spirit, blaze new trails as we look back at history, and make unremitting efforts to realize the country's "two 100-year" goals and the goal of building a 100-year-strong school.
The Launch of "100th Anniversary and 100-Person Forum"
The Issue of a Letter of Appointment
A Lecture by Shan Jixiang
Teachers and Students at the Site
