Diabolo museum opens to tourists for free

On May 18, Beijing Diabolo Museum, the first intangible cultural heritage theme museum to settle in a Beijing community, formally opened to tourists. Xuanwu District will offer strong support to the establishment of small-sized museums, with a goal of creating tourism markets with traditional cultural characteristics. The district also intends to display the most valued treasures of each museum gathered together at the Liulichang area.

A little girl plays diabolo at the museum on May 18.

After one year's preparation, the diabolo museum formally opened on May 18, attracting a lot of residents to visit. The museum is located in a small “siheyuan” (courtyard house) on the west of the south square of Beijing Baoguo Temple, and covers an area of 200 square meters.

The museum includes three exhibition halls, with the main (north) room of the siheyuan transformed into a comprehensive exhibition hall for diabolo, where its development and evolution, its spread and changes in the craftsmanship as well as its various patterns are represented from three different perspectives: history, manufacturing process, and skills and techniques.

The museum specially invited Li Lianyuan, a national level diabolo player, together with the volunteers of a diabolo team in Guangnei Street, to form a commentary team, ensuring there were two persons to offer professional explanations to the spectators both in the morning and in the afternoon. The museum adopted multimedia technology to showcase the diabolo culture crossways to people by combining real objects with animation, pictures and short films.

On the west side of the museum is a hall featuring heritage and conservation, which records a series of activities by Guangnei community office, including building a theme plaza, publishing ancient books, visiting campuses to give performances and attending the performance before the official opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. On the eastern side is a hall for on-site demonstrations and interactive activities with all equipments needed to make diabolo including a small lathe, tools and a worktable, which allows spectators to learn the whole process of making diabolo.

Tan Xiaofeng, head of the Publicity Department of Xuanwu District, said that the district plans to join the museum and Baoguo Temple together to build a tourist market, and may come up with relevant tourism souvenirs.

Open time: Tuesday through Sunday from 9:00 to 16:30, free of charge

Address: No. 9, Xiaoxing hutong, Xuanwu District, Beijing (siheyuan on the west of Baoguo Temple's south square).