Palatial groundings

Beijing's Palace Museum's summer-intern program is proving a draw for students from southern China, who have an interest in cultural conservations, Wang Kaihao reports.

Not every college intern has the good fortune to bypass a mundane clerical job to make a former imperial palace their "office". But for 24-year-old Kong Ka-ian from Macao, the prospect of spending the summer in Beijing's Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, was certainly enviable.

Barely visible to passing tourists, an enclosed courtyard deep in the palace is where she gets to spend her time cleaning nearly 250-year-old paintings on the beams of a pavilion.