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`Puppet palace' in Changchun gets facelift
A three-year renovation of the Imperial Palace Museum has been completed, where Japan's puppet "emperor'' of "Manchuguo" state lived in the 1930s and 1940s. The museum will open to the public on August 15, the local government announced Tuesday. It will accommodate 5,000 visitors a day and up to 1 million a year by 2005. Aixinjueluo Puyi, the "emperor" once lived in the palace in Changchun as the regime installed in Northeast China by the Japanese between 1932 and 1945. He was also the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which was overthrown by the 1911 Revolution. The palace is testimony to Japanese aggression. Japanese troops invaded and occupied Northeast China. "The royal site is irreplaceable to Changchun either as an important education base or a distinctive scenic spot," Director of the Imperial Palace Museum Li Yifu said. The government ploughed 600 million yuan (US$72.5 million) into the renovation works, of which 200 million yuan (US$24 million) went into building work and collecting artifacts, and 400 million yuan (US$48.3 million) was spent on clearing surrounding companies and residents and improving the environment. With a target of "renovating the original appearance of the palace, the first two stages of renovation had already been successively completed in July last year. In the 1990s, the entire ground area of the exhibition hall was only 1.24 million square metres, less than 10 per cent of its original scale. Companies, markets and housing took up the rest of the site. Li Yifu said that since 1984, when it was opened to the public, 4 million visitors from home and abroad had visited. |
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