AT A RECENT FORUM, Shan Jixiang, head of the Palace Museum, said they are working to open more areas within the museum to tourists. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

The aim is for more than 80 percent of the Palace Museum to be open to tourists next year.

The move is of great cultural significance. According to a recent regulation of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the managements of cultural heritage buildings are encouraged to open them to the public, so as to make better use of them for educational purposes.

That principle is correct because only when people have a better knowledge of the past will they truly appreciate our traditional culture. Cultural confidence will be boosted in this way.

Some worry that by opening a larger part of the Palace Museum to tourists, the historical relics might suffer from the uncivilized behavior of some of the tourists. That worry is not unreasonable as there have been reports about tourists touching the relics improperly and damaging them, but that's no reason to lock the relics away.

Besides, many people treat the Palace Museum as a scenic spot rather than a place of culture and knowledge. That's partly because too many parts of the museum have been off-limits to visitors, so they had nothing to see but the old buildings. Opening more parts of the museum to visitors will hopefully correct this misunderstanding, because people will obtain more knowledge about the relics inside.

Cultural confidence and cultural prosperity are based on people's knowledge of their past. As the biggest domestic museum, the Palace Museum has a role to play, and opening more of it to visitors will help it better perform that role.