Cultural officials in east China's Jiangsu Province celebrated the 70th anniversary of China's first museum with a series of activities on Saturday.

Nanjing Museum, founded in the provincial capital in 1933, has a collection of more than 400,000 precious cultural relics, such as bronze wares, jade objects, silk, jewellery, calligraphy works and paintings.

The province's First Cultural Relics Festival was held as part of the celebration to give the public more information about protecting relics.

Zhang Jianhua, head of the provincial government's culture department, said: "We have organized this festival for three main purposes, which can be summed up in three words: displaying, propagating and entreating."

Zhang explained that the precious relics have been put on public display. The importance of protecting relics to the development of society and the need for related laws and regulations are being propagated among the public. The festival is also entreating people to help protect relics.

The seven-day festival features various kinds of forums, lectures, exhibitions and performances, most of which are being held in Nanjing Museum. There are eight lectures on the protection of relics and 10 exhibitions of different relics and paintings.

More than 200 officials, experts and scholars from famous museums throughout the world have gathered in Nanjing to discuss the development of international museums and to exchange views.

(China Daily October 20, 2003)