Beijing's hidden luxury gem: Zitan Palace Museum! All zitan masterpieces!

China Zitan Museum is located at No. 23 Jianguo Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing. This building in the style of the Ming and Qing dynasties is China's first and largest zitan art museum, dedicated to the collection, research, and display of zitan furniture and traditional classical furniture. 1. The museum was built with an investment of RMB 200 million by the curator, Ms. Chen Lihua, and opened in September 1999. By the end of 2019, the museum had a collection of 300 pieces/sets, held 13 exhibitions and 17 educational activities, and attracted 80,000 visitors. 2. Zitan Palace has four floors above ground, with exhibition halls on the first to third floors and a VIP room and multi-functional exhibition hall on the fourth floor. The building as a whole presents a strong traditional national style, with the main entrance made of pure wood, using more than 400 cubic meters of wood, and the four pillars supporting the main entrance are 8 meters high and 0.6 meters thick. 3. The main building uses the brick polishing and jointing process, while the square in front of the museum is paved with large blue bricks and soaked in tung oil, a method that was only used by the royal family in the past, known as the sea-mantle fighting board floor. During the construction, woodwork experts, tile experts, and painting experts who had worked at the Palace Museum since the founding of the People's Republic of China were hired. 4. The museum has a central hall, exhibition hall, conference hall, VIP hall, multi-functional hall, and temporary exhibition hall. Visitors can enjoy the display of Ming and Qing furniture collected by Curator Chen Lihua over decades, the display of traditional furniture masterpieces carefully guided and produced over the past 30 years, the display of Buddhist cultural artworks, the display of traditional furniture materials, shapes, and structures, and the display of carving techniques. In addition, there are miniature Chinese ancient architectural landscapes, such as the corner tower of the Forbidden City, the Qianqiu Pavilion and Wanchun Pavilion in the Imperial Garden of the Forbidden City, and the archway of Longquan Temple on Mount Wutai in Shanxi. 5. The museum houses and exhibits more than 1,000 pieces of court wood art masterpieces and Ming and Qing dynasty antique furniture carved from the most precious materials, such as zitan, ebony, huanghuali, golden nanmu, and chicken-wing wood. Ming dynasty furniture developed and matured on the basis of Song and Yuan dynasty furniture, forming the most representative national style, "Ming style." Ming-style furniture is very rich in variety, with the main types preserved being stools and chairs, tables and desks, cabinets, beds and couches, and stands. In addition, there are also screens, inserted screens, and floor screens used as barriers. 6. Ming-style furniture is mostly made of hardwoods such as huanghuali, zitan, chicken-wing wood, and iron pear, as well as nanmu, camphor, walnut, elm, and other hardwoods, among which huanghuali is the best. These hardwoods have a soft color, clear texture, hardness, and elasticity, which have a great impact on the shape, structure, and artistic effect of the furniture. 7. Here, you can not only appreciate the exquisite furniture but also feel the strong cultural atmosphere and the unique charm of classical furniture.