A crowd of visitors listen intently to a volunteer explaining an exhibit in the bronze section of the Shanghai Museum yesterday. (Photo: Shanghai Daily)

Free entry to Shanghai museums caused new problems on its first full weekend with large crowds and poor behavior.

More than 10,000 visitors went to the Shanghai Museum each day at the weekend.

Since the free entry offer officially began last Monday, the city's largest cultural museum has struggled to handle an average of more than 6,000 visitors each day.

Shanghai Museum Curator Chen Xiejun had previously said that daily visitors should be restricted to fewer than 5,000, including 1,500 advanced booking spectators.

Since the admission was waived, the museum has had to continuously adjust the number and speed at which free tickets have been handed out to ensure not too many people enter the museum each hour.

Yesterday, 26-year-old Li Zeming and his girlfriend said that they waited more than an hour before entering the exhibition section.

By 3:30pm, 30 minutes before the signed last entry, the museum had stopped allowing visitors in due to the large crowds.

The Shanghai Museum has also taken away bans on photographing exhibits.

It has added extra guards and volunteers to help control crowds.

Despite the majority of well behaved visitors, some problems were still spotted.

On the ground-floor gallery of Chinese ancient sculpture, some visitors touched the Buddhas, while some squeezed into the middle of two Buddhas to take pictures.

"There are signs nearby that say not to touch the exhibits, but some visitors just don't follow it," said a guard who did not want to be named.

"Since the number of our guards and volunteers is limited, we couldn't stop them from touching if we didn't see them do it."

Beggars who have begun entering the museum have also caused the guards headaches.

"Beggars appear as normal visitors when they're not asking others for money, so we can't refuse them entry here," the guard said.

(Shanghai Daily March 17, 2008)