Docent team forges strong sense of community for Chinese nation

Young Team

To prepare for the exhibition, and relevant themed exhibitions in the future, the National Palace of Ethnic Cultures cultivated a team of young docents, and named the team the National Palace of Ethnic Cultures docent team for forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation. The team now has 52 members, including 40 women. They are not full-time docents; instead, they are employees from 15 of the museum's departments. "We are an open team. All new employees of the museum will be recruited onto the team," says He Xin, an ethnic Manchu woman and leader of the team.

The team's members represent the various ethnic groups in China, including the Manchu, Oroqen, Uygur and Yi minorities. "We are a team composed of people from different ethnic groups, and we tell the stories of the interactions and exchanges between the various ethnic groups. This is what makes us special, and it is also one of the highlights of our work," says Aynur Ahmat, a Uygur member of the team.

The team is a small community of its own, where people from China's different ethnic groups work in unity, for a common purpose and mutual progress.

"To ensure we will deliver high-quality docent services, we train to strengthen our theoretical studies, to revise our scripts, and to learn from docent teams in other museums," says Liu Fang, an ethnic Han woman. "We need to memorize a script of more than 40,000 Chinese characters. It is estimated that each one of us delivers at least 10 docent services a month. For me, I once provided services to 12 visiting groups in a day," says Feng Ziqian, a young ethnic Yi woman.