"Come on, come on," dozens of children cheered, surrounding a sweaty boy who was riding a fitness bike and racing against a dinosaur on a screen in front of him.

Another round of joyful acclamations sprang up from the crowd when "You win!" showed up on the screen.

"Fantastic and breathtaking," said Gao Qianfeng, 12, who was still immersed in the victory. "I was 'eaten' by the dinosaur the first time around, but I beat it on the second try!"

The cheerful laughs and cries of children kept hovering over the grand hall, giving the visitors an illusion that they'd arrived at an amusement park, rather than the Beijing Natural History Museum.

The game, called "racing against dinosaurs," is just one of the spotlights in the new palaeontological exhibition of the museum entitled "The Track of Life," which opened to the public on Monday.

With valuable fossils of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures as well as vivid exhibition boards, the 1,550-square-metres exhibition hall is decorated with bright colours, comfortable lights and in a trendy style, dazzling the visitors.

The staff of the museum has spent over a year and 6 million yuan (US$730,000) to prepare for the brand new exhibition.

A total of about 380 fine fossils are on display, among which 90 per cent have been put on show for the first time, according to Li Jianjun, a palaeontologist at the museum who was in charge of the renovation.

"It has been a long time since we last saw such bustling scenes in our museum," said Li.

"A museum will lose its glamour if its face is always cold and aloof. Our key target is to stimulate people's interests towards nature and life -- making fun out of supposed-to-be-boring knowledge through our exhibition."

No longer a stuffy place

For years, the name of the Beijing Natural History Museum often evoked the same image: grand hall, marble ground, exhibits being put behind thick and huge glass cases with accurate and profound subtitles in both Chinese and Latin.

All this gave a very serious atmosphere inside the museum, said Rao Chenggang, curator of the museum.

"Our museum used to be like an aloof teacher with a cold face who wanted to infuse visitors with professional knowledge in a systematical way," said Rao.

The previous palaeon-tological exhibition was designed in 1984 and there had been no major changes in nearly two decades, while Chinese scientists have made so many new discoveries during this period.

Though the largest museum of such kind in China, the museum gradually lost its attraction to visitors in recent years, despite the fact that the artefacts kept there form a great encyclopaedia of nature.

"People got bored with the dull and dreary exhibitions. No wonder they would not come," Rao said.

Far from its old image, the new exhibition offers an entirely new world to visitors, which is divided into four main themes including "origin of life and its early evolution," "birth of the invertebrate," "the evolution of dinosaurs," "great development of the vertebrates."

Large and vivid fossil specimens of more than 10 types of dinosaurs, including a 26-metre-long fossil of Mamenchisaurus Jingyanensis, the longest dinosaur fossil ever found in China, as well as the footprints of dinosaurs and the dinosaur eggs, are placed in the centre of the museum.

Only a thin thread "secures" the precious fossils.

The thick huge glass cases are gone now, substituted by small pieces of glasses protecting the surface of the relatively small fossils, allowing people to closely watch them. In some areas, visitors are able to touch some fossils.

By creating this brand new exhibition, the curators hope to shorten the distance between the exhibits and visitors as much as possible, according to Li Jianjun.

Li studied museology for one year in the British Natural History Museum between 1989 and 1990, where he had chances to touch and taste the new concept of museum shows personally.

He wrote all the interpretations for the exhibitions with vivid, easily-understood words, which anyone with a middle-school level education would comprehend.

Besides "race with dinosaurs," other computer games such as "weigh yourself against dinosaurs," "piece together a dinosaur with its bones," "searching dinosaur fossils among rocks" are found around the hall.

Li Jianjun said he would be the most satisfied if most people used the word "funny" to comment on the exhibition.

"The museum should be a place that offers people happiness and knowledge at the same time, a place that deserves more than one visit, a place that intrigues people's curiosity about nature and life."

The swarms of visitors on the first two days are enough to prove the success of the new attempts.

Bian Zhihui, a teacher at the Jingzhonglu Primary School said she was surprised that her students, around 200, were so happy there when visiting the museum on the first day the new show opened.

To expand students' scope of knowledge, the school organized its students to visit the museum each year since late 1990s, Bian said.

"But it's the first time that the students don't want to leave even after a whole morning visit and smiles are on their faces all the time.

"Children love the brisk environment here. Games are their favourite. I believe they would like to come back again. That's a good start of study," she said.

State-of-the-art show

The exhibitions are not just designed for children, of course, said Li.

"It's also designed to attract professionals."

The displayed fossils specimens are among the best and the most precious collections of the museum and are very rarely seen, according to Zhang Baokun, another palaeon-tologist at the museum.

Among the rare fossils, Archaefructus sinensis, a 125-million-year-old fossil of the oldest flowering plant found so far on earth, was unearthed in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

There is also the unique feathered dinosaur fossil that belongs to the 130-million-year-old Jehol Biota in Liaoning. It gives the support to the hypothesis that birds originated from dinosaurs.

Other rare fossils are selected from the 530-million-year-old fossils of Chengjiang Fauna, a discovery in Southwest China's Yunnan Province. The discovery has helped move the history of the most primitive vertebrates further back another 50 million years.

"The past two decades have witnessed the quickest development of Chinese palaeontology as many tremendous discoveries have been made in China like Jehol Biota and Chengjiang Fauna," said Zhang.

"We ought to share the advance of current palaeontology with the public."

The state-of-the-art knowledge is also demonstrated in lively ways.

Virtual animation reconstructs the bloom scene of "Cambrian Life Explosion" -- the Chengjiang Fauna.

The exhibition area of the Jehol Biota is decorated with bright yellow and red.

"I hope that we would be successful to attract people with funs," said Li Jianjun.

(China Daily August 29, 2003)