China’s Nationwide Cultural Heritage Administration has ordered public museums throughout the nation to strengthen emergency administration protocols to guard guests and artefacts, following a string of energy outages and overcrowding incidents throughout the summer time vacation season.
The directive follows a number of infrastructural breakdowns at main cultural establishments. On 4 August, the Terracotta Warriors Museum in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, suffered a sudden blackout and air-conditioning breakdown throughout its three excavation pits and principal exhibition corridor, at round 1pm native time. The outage lasted a number of hours. Information of the blackout first circulated on the social media platform Rednote, earlier than being picked up by native media; movies and pictures confirmed guests counting on flashlights to maintain viewing the reveals.
Comparable outages struck the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing and the Datong Museum in Shanxi province on 7 and eight August, respectively.
In the meantime, Zhejiang Museum issued an apology on its official WeChat account to guests who confronted entry delays brought on by overcrowding and gates malfunctioning on 6 August.
In keeping with notices from the museums concerned, the outages stemmed from system overload and ageing tools, worsened by the summer time’s excessive heatwave.
Conservation consultants have expressed concern over the impact the outages could have had on delicate historic relics.
“Sudden energy outages can have a detrimental affect on antiquities that require strict temperature and humidity controls,” Joey Cao, a lecturer within the Division of Conservation and Restoration on the China Academy of Artwork, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Nonetheless, the severity relies on the environmental distinction created by the outage. A drastic shift between ambient circumstances and an artefact’s ideally suited local weather poses a severe menace, whereas a minor fluctuation is much much less damaging.”
The incidents come as cultural tourism has turn into a mainstay leisure exercise for Chinese language households, driving steadily rising museum attendance nationwide. The Terracotta Warriors Museum, a Unesco World Heritage Web site constructed on the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, homes the famed terracotta military that was created as a funerary providing. It was the second most visited museum in China in 2025, drawing nearly 11 million guests, in keeping with a report by the Nationwide Cultural Heritage Administration.
In response to the disruptions, the Nationwide Cultural Heritage Administration mentioned museums ought to deploy digital camera surveillance and different flow-monitoring techniques to trace real-time customer numbers, and may implement mechanisms to refine reserving techniques and forestall “sudden surges in customer numbers and entry disruptions”. It additionally inspired museums to ascertain information-sharing mechanisms with native governments, in order that officers are alerted as soon as customer numbers attain a sure threshold and to keep away from issues brought on by delayed communication.
Moreover, the directive mandates complete upkeep overhauls throughout key facility infrastructure, together with back-up energy provide techniques, central air-conditioning, hearth management mechanisms and assortment storage areas.
The Artwork Newspaper has reached out to the Nationwide Cultural Heritage Administration in addition to the Terracotta Warriors Museum, the Lu Xun Museum and the Datong Museum for remark.
