Celebrating New Year in museums of China

If you can't fulfill yourself during the holidays by going to a temple fair or simply wolfing down new year dinners from one restaurant to another, why don't you try visiting some museums and enjoying the exhibitions tailored for the occasion? Here are some of our recommendations to help you learn something new.

Moving on to Shanghai, there's an exhibition of more than 500 master pieces of ivory carvings.

In southwest China's Sichuan Province, the Sanxingdui Museum welcomes visitors with its newly renovated exhibition halls. They are now open to all during the new year season.

Lots of newly unearthed porcelain wares and pottery pieces are on display for the very first time.

From the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year to the fourth day, the museum received more than 20,000 visitors from around the country. The number shows that local tourism has totally recovered since the devastated Wenchuan Earthquake jolted the area nearly three years ago.

Moving on to Shanghai, there's an exhibition of more than 500 master pieces of ivory carvings. It's the first time that the delicate skills of Chinese ivory carvings have been given an exclusive exhibition in China.

The exhibits come in various shapes and sizes, depicting disparate subject matter.

The Shanghai School of ivory-carving is well known for its graceful patterns and refined carving skills. But due to the global ban of ivory trade issued in 1989 and the lack of raw materials, the craft of ivory carving was once on the verge of fading away. Confronting the reality, a studio tailored for master ivory sculptors was established in Shanghai in 2006, in an effort to pass the tradition on to the next generation.

Finally we head for Fuzhou in east China's Fujian Province. Here at the Shipping Culture Museum visitors are captivated by the exhibition chronicling the history of the Chinese navy. On display are cannons and diaries of Chinese marine soldiers, inviting spectators on a journey to unravel the maritime myth of the vast China seas.